Aurelia Butler

The former president’s decision to elevate Laura Loomer, a far-right activist known for racist and homophobic posts online, has stunned even some Trump allies.Before Donald J. Trump traveled to Philadelphia for this week’s debate, he invited one of the internet’s most polarizing figures along for the ride.Laura Loomer was backstage with the Trump entourage while Mr. Trump squared off against Vice President Kamala Harris. She was in the spin room with the former president immediately afterward. And the next day, she flew with him to New York City and Shanksville, Pa., to commemorate the anniversary of Sept. 11.A far-right activist known for her endless stream of sexist, homophobic, transphobic, anti-Muslim and occasionally antisemitic social media posts and public stunts, Ms. Loomer has made a name for herself over the past decade by unabashedly claiming 9/11 was “an inside job,” calling Islam “a cancer,” accusing Ron DeSantis’s wife of exaggerating breast cancer and claiming that President Biden was behind the attempt to assassinate Mr. Trump in July.Just two days before the debate, Ms. Loomer, 31, posted a racist joke about the vice president, whose mother was Indian American. Ms. Loomer wrote on X that if Ms. Harris won the election, the White House would “smell like curry.”For many observers, including some of Mr. Trump’s most important allies, the Republican presidential nominee’s choice at a critical moment of the campaign to platform a social-media instigator, albeit one with 1.3 million followers on X, was stunning.“The history of this person is just really toxic,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Trump ally, told a reporter for HuffPost on Thursday. “I don’t think it’s helpful at all.”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

Correction Department rules “do not clearly require officers to provide immediate care to people with severely bleeding wounds,” the New York attorney general’s office said.Michael Nieves sliced his throat with a razor around 11:40 a.m. on Aug. 25, 2022. For the next 10 minutes, correction workers at the Rikers Island jail complex stood by his cell and watched him bleed without providing medical care.Mr. Nieves later died.The failure by three correction workers to offer aid was “an omission” that contributed to Mr. Nieves’s death, the New York attorney general’s office of special investigation found in a report published on Tuesday. But because Mr. Nieves might have died even had he received immediate medical help, the attorney general, Letitia James, said her office would not charge the workers criminally.In a surprising finding, the report also said that the workers had followed correction department rules by deciding not to render help.“The D.O.C.’s rules and regulations do not clearly require officers to provide immediate care to people with severely bleeding wounds,” the attorney general’s office said in a news release.The decision not to charge the corrections workers “is incredibly disappointing,” said Samuel Shapiro, a lawyer hired by members of Mr. Nieves’s family, who have filed a lawsuit against the city in federal court. Describing surveillance footage that captures Mr. Nieves’s suicide attempt and the workers’ response, Mr. Shapiro said, “It is incredibly disturbing to watch city employees stand there as Mr. Nieves is slowly bleeding to death from his neck and do nothing to help him.”The Department of Correction suspended all three workers for 30 days. When they returned to work, they were prohibited from having contact with detainees. In May 2023, two officers, Beethoven Joseph and Jeron Smith, were accused by the department of violating rules and a directive on suicide prevention and intervention. The disciplinary proceedings are still pending, the attorney general’s office said.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

Although it had been billed as an event focused on housing and the economy, former President Donald J. Trump spent much of a meandering speech on Thursday in Tucson, Ariz., venting his grievances over his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris.But when he eventually did turn to the section on economic issues, Mr. Trump made a new proposal as he sought to win the votes of working- and middle-class Americans: He called for eliminating taxes on overtime pay.“The people who work overtime are among the hardest-working citizens in our country, and for too long, no one in Washington has been looking out for them,” Mr. Trump said. “Those are the people that really work. They’re police officers, nurses, factory workers, construction workers, truck drivers and machine operators.”Mr. Trump’s speech was his first campaign event since a debate performance on Tuesday night that some of his allies have admitted fell short. Mr. Trump insisted to around 2,000 supporters in Tucson that it was a “monumental victory” for him that rendered the need for a subsequent debate unnecessary.“Because we’ve done two debates and because they were successful, there will be no third debate,” Mr. Trump said, repeating a declaration he made earlier on his social media platform, Truth Social.Even as he maintained that he had triumphed, Mr. Trump spent significant time during his speech bashing the debate’s host, ABC News, and its moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis.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

A Bronx grifter and an Iowa homebody share a house and eventually learn from each other in this Broadway star vehicle.“Expansion is progress,” Sharon says sweetly, parroting a phrase from a business journal for the benefit of her new roommate, Robyn.A ditsy 65-year-old divorcée, Sharon is a convert to the virtues of new ventures — even illegal ones — after years of a life in which options for growth seemed few.But Robyn, who encouraged the experimentation from the minute she arrived to rent a room in Sharon’s Iowa City home, is alarmed by the change from meek to monster. A plate of pot brownies for the book club ladies is one thing; larceny is another. “Sustaining and expanding,” she warns, “are two different activities.”Because Robyn is played by the surgically funny Patti LuPone, that line, not especially amusing in itself, gets a big laugh. And because Sharon is played by the preternaturally sympathetic Mia Farrow, her every hiccup and dither evokes a sigh.Most of what either woman says in “The Roommate,” which opened Thursday at the Booth Theater, is greeted by one or the other response. The two actors, old friends and old hands, play beautifully off each other, expertly riding the seesaw of a play, by Jen Silverman, that throws a Bronx grifter looking to reform herself into an unlikely alliance with a flyover frump looking to ditch her flannel ways. The actors’ intense focus and extreme contrast multiply the material exponentially, sending it way past the footlights to the back of the Booth.But as we’ve learned, sustaining and expanding are two different activities. Indeed, the Broadway supersizing of “The Roommate,” which has been produced regionally since 2015, does not necessarily represent progress, even as it no doubt reaps profit.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

A report by the federal border agency on the school shooting in 2022 found that its agents lacked adequate training and authority to respond to active shooter situations.Amid two years of painful wrangling over the delayed police response to the deadly shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the role of the federal agents who finally breached the classrooms and killed the gunman has largely avoided scrutiny.The agents, from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, were seen as having saved the day by responding to the school and stepping in after a 77-minute delay.But a 203-page report released on Wednesday by the agency complicated that simple narrative, finding that the border agents had been just as confused and delayed as dozens of other state and local law enforcement agents inside the school by the chaotic and mostly leaderless response.The report, from the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility, also offered the most detailed account yet of the tense and violent moments when federal agents finally entered the classrooms and the gunman burst from a closet and began firing at them.And despite the agents’ central role in confronting and killing the gunman, the report raised questions about whether the dozens who responded had the legal authority to do so. The agents were insufficiently trained in responding to active shooter situations, the report found.Its recommendations included that the agency take steps to better train its officers in active shooter responses, particularly to those in which breaching a door may be necessary, and to seek to clarify the law around how the agency interacts with state and local law enforcement during such events.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

A sweeping change would have thousands of judges, from local courtrooms all the way up to the Supreme Court, elected instead of appointed.A landmark shift unfolded in Mexico on Thursday as a majority of its 32 states approved an overhaul of the country’s judicial system. In a monumental change, thousands of judges would be elected instead of appointed, from local courtrooms to the Supreme Court.The measure could produce one of the most far-reaching judicial overhauls of any major democracy and has already provoked deep division in Mexico.Nevertheless, the legislation’s passage into law was practically a foregone conclusion by Thursday as President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced his intent to publish the bill on Sunday, on the eve of Mexico’s Independence Day.“It is a very important reform,” Mr. López Obrador, whose six-year tenure ends at the end of the month, said during his daily news conference. “It’s reaffirming that in Mexico there is an authentic democracy where the people elect their representatives.”The departing president and his Morena party have championed remaking the court system as a way to curtail graft, influence-peddling and nepotism and to give Mexicans a greater voice. Mr. López Obrador’s successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, will take office on Oct. 1 and has fully backed the plan.But court workers, judges, legal scholars and opposition leaders argue that it would inadequately address issues such as corruption and instead bolster Mr. López Obrador’s political movement.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 company has been banned from servicing federal student loans and must pay $100 million to harmed borrowers, as well as a $20 million penalty.Navient, formerly one of the nation’s largest student loan servicers, reached a $120 million settlement with federal regulators on Thursday to resolve claims that it misled federal student loan borrowers and mishandled their payments for years.The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said the deal would permanently ban the company from managing federal student loans and require it to pay $100 million in restitution to affected borrowers along with a $20 million penalty.The consumer watchdog’s suit had accused Navient of failing borrowers at every step of repayment: Among other misdeeds, it said the company steered borrowers away from more affordable income-driven repayment plans and into forbearance, which padded its own profits and forced borrowers to pay more than they had to.“For years, Navient’s top executives profited handsomely by exploiting students and taxpayers,” said Rohit Chopra, the director of the consumer agency. “By banning the notorious student loan giant from federal student loan servicing and ensuring the wind down of these operations, the C.F.P.B. will finally put an end to the years of abuse.”During a media call, agency officials said borrowers who were eligible for restitution payments did not need to do anything — the C.F.P.B. would mail checks to “hundreds of thousands” of federal student loan borrowers, after it analyzed which consumers were due payments. It’s unclear how long that will take. (The agency also warned borrowers to beware of scammers who might try to use C.F.P.B. imagery to steal money or private information.)The settlement closes the book on two related legal actions that date back to 2017, when the consumer protection agency and two state attorneys general — later backed by a coalition of attorneys general in 27 other states — sued Navient.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

Is the world on the brink of chaos, or is the chaos already here? Some commentators view the presidential campaign as a referendum on chaos. “I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos.”— Taylor Swift, endorsing Kamala Harris Others predict that the election […] More