Aurelia Butler

If the goal of the CNN interview with Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota was to relitigate the campaign controversies of the last month — to get the candidates to talk about the major narratives of the election so far — then it was a rousing success. Harris easily dispatched questions about her identity and gave a strong defense of President Biden’s record. Walz, likewise, made short work of the charge that he had misled the public when he spoke about using one fertility treatment when it was actually another, similar treatment.But if the goal was to learn something about a prospective President Harris — to gain insight into how she might make decisions, order priorities and approach the job of chief executive — then I think the interview was not a success. Not so much for Harris or the viewing public.It might be interesting to journalists to know how Harris explains her changing views from 2019, when she ran for the Democratic nomination, to now, when she is the nominee. But it is not at all clear to me that it is interesting to viewers, who may be less concerned with how she deals with the question and more concerned with the actual substance of what she wants to do as president. A soft-focus question about a photograph, however iconic, seems less valuable than a question about Harris’s view of the presidency now that she’s spent almost four years in the passenger’s seat as vice president.Speaking for myself, I am less interested in hearing candidates navigate controversies or speak to narratives than I am in hearing them talk, for lack of a better term, about their theory of the office. How does a candidate for president conceptualize the presidency? What would she prioritize in office and how would she handle an endless onslaught of crises and issues that may, or may not, demand her attention? How does she imagine her relationship with Congress and how would she try to achieve her goals in the face of an opposition legislature? How does she imagine her relationship with the public and what value does she place on communication and the bully pulpit? Are there presidents she most admires — and why? Are there presidential accomplishments that stand out and how so? What are the worst mistakes a president can make? Why do you want this job in the first place?I can think of other questions along these lines, but you get the gist. To know what candidates for president think about the office and their role in it is, I believe, a better guide to what they may do in the White House than almost anything else. The only thing better is prior experience. These kinds of questions may not make for the most scintillating television, but I think they could provide the kind of insights that could actually help Americans decide what they want out of a national leader.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

In a reversal, two senior U.S. military officials say the cause of the F-16’s crash was probably not friendly fire.As hundreds of Russian missiles and drones streaked across Ukraine on Monday, the Ukrainian fighter pilot known as Moonfish was exactly where he had said he always wanted to be: in the cockpit of an F-16 giving chase.“The F-16 is a Swiss Army knife,” the pilot, Lt. Col. Oleksiy Mes, told reporters while training on the warplane last fall. “It’s a very good weapon that can carry out any mission.”Colonel Mes helped lead Ukraine’s intense lobbying effort to secure the F-16 fighter jets, a half-dozen of which joined the fight against Russia earlier this month. And he was among the dozen or so pilots trained to fly the sophisticated warplane in combat.After shooting down three Russian cruise missiles and one attack drone in Monday’s assault, he was racing to intercept yet another target when ground control lost communication with his aircraft, Ukrainian Air Force officials said.“The plane crashed, the pilot died,” the Ukrainian military said in a statement.The death of a widely celebrated pilot and the loss of one of the long-coveted fighter jets so soon after their deployment cast a pall over the battlefield just as the giddy first days of the incursion into Russia’s Kursk region were fading away and concerns mounted over an advancing Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine.As the nation mourned the death of the pilot, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine dismissed the head of the country’s Air Force and promised a thorough investigation of the incident, including the possibility raised by a Western official on Friday that it was the result of friendly fire from a Patriot missile battery.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 first Black officer to achieve the rank of lieutenant general, he lived to see an Army post in Virginia renamed in his honor.Arthur J. Gregg, the first African American Army officer to reach the rank of lieutenant general and the only person in modern history to have a military base named for him in his lifetime, died on Aug. 22. He was 96.The Army announced the death on its website, but did not cite a cause or say where he died.In April 2023, Fort Lee in Virginia was renamed Fort Gregg-Adams in honor of General Gregg, who in 1977 became the Army’s first Black three-star general, and Lt. Col. Charity Adams Earley, who was the highest-ranking Black woman to serve as an Army officer in World War II.The new name was recommended by a congressional commission charged with rechristening nine military bases named for Confederate officers, as part of a national self-examination around race set off by the murder of George Floyd in 2020.Fort Lee was named for Robert E. Lee, one of eight Virginians at the outbreak of the Civil War who were West Point graduates and U.S. Army colonels. Among them, the renaming commission noted, only Lee chose to take up arms against the United States. “The main difference” separating Lee from the others “was that Lee and his family enslaved other humans,” the commission’s report stated.Fort Gregg-Adams, about 30 miles south of Richmond, has long been a hub of Army logistics, the field in which General Gregg made his 35-year military career. He commanded a 3,700-soldier logistics battalion in Vietnam, based in Cam Ranh Bay, and rose to be deputy chief of staff for logistics for the Army, overseeing support services around the world.He was posted to Fort Lee as a young officer in 1950 to train in logistics. Although President Harry S. Truman had ordered the desegregation of the military two years earlier, the facts on the ground had changed little.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 nuptials of Princess Martha Louise and Durek Verrett attracted huge public interest and a streaming deal for a couple trying to reclaim their narrative after years of bad press.There was no castle, nor were there throngs of exuberant crowds to celebrate this royal wedding. Nonetheless, the nuptials on Saturday of a Norwegian princess and an American self-described shaman attracted public fascination at home and a Netflix deal abroad.The royal involved — Princess Martha Louise, daughter of King Harald V and Queen Sonja of Norway — wed the American, Durek Verrett, after years of often mocking public scrutiny, largely because of Mr. Verrett’s alternative views on health and wellness. The ceremony, a private affair in the remote, picturesque Norwegian village of Geiranger, attracted a gaggle of reporters and a modest crowd of curious residents.The couple sailed into Geiranger, nestled in the majestic Geirangerfjord, a world heritage site, on the royal yacht on Friday, along with members of the royal family, including King Harald and Queen Sonja, according to an official statement.The celebrations on Saturday began with brunch, with the option of a spa treatment available for all guests, according to a copy of the program seen by The New York Times. The day’s schedule also included an afternoon tea, early evening cocktails and a gala dinner. At 10:50 p.m., “the party begins,” the program said, promising late night snacks at 1 a.m.The ceremony itself was held in a marquee on a farm whose meadows overlook the fjords. The couple, stung by the years of critical news coverage, had tried — and failed — to keep the location a secret. The three-day event was privately financed, the royal family said, but that did not stop reporters from speculating about the cost of security arrangements for those attending.The ceremony itself was held on Saturday in a marquee on a farm whose meadows overlook the fjords.Heiko Junge/NTB, via ReutersWe 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

Americans are being asked to tip more often and in more places than ever before: at fast food counters and corner stores, at auto garages and carwashes, even at self-checkout kiosks. That has rankled many customers and divided both employers and tipped workers.It may soon get worse. Both major-party presidential candidates have embraced proposals to eliminate income taxes on tips, a move that would, in effect, subsidize tipping and prompt more businesses to rely on it.Economists across the political spectrum have panned the tax idea, arguing that it is unfair — favoring one set of low-wage workers over others — and could have unintended consequences. Even some tipped workers and groups that represent them are skeptical, worrying that over the long term the policy could result in lower pay.But the debate alone underscores how service-sector workers have emerged from the pandemic as an economically and politically potent force. The spread of tipping in recent years was, in part, a result of the intense demand for workers, and the leverage it gave them. The presidential candidates’ dueling proposals signal that they see the nation’s roughly four million tipped workers as a constituency worth wooing.“I do think it’s a reflection of this change in which people are finally hearing and recognizing that these workers matter,” said Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage, an advocacy organization. “Tipped workers had never seen their needs named in any way by any presidential candidate, ever.”Ms. Jayaraman isn’t a fan of the tax exemption idea, though she is optimistic that the attention being paid to the issue could lead to policies she considers more important. One is the elimination of the subminimum wage, which allows businesses in some states to pay workers as little as $2.13 an hour as long as they receive enough in tips to bring them up to the full minimum wage.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 French novel that was adapted into “Vertigo”; Cameron Crowe’s nonfiction account of a year inside a public high school.Dear readers,I once went on a coffee date with a man who, early on, confided that he had based the décor of his studio apartment on the sets of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s lurid psychodrama classic, “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant.” I found this confidence so mortifying (and the prospect of white fur rugs so alarming) that I did not see him a second time, thereby saving me from having to admit that my own studio’s décor had been inspired by Midge’s apartment in Alfred Hitchcock’s lurid psychodrama classic, “Vertigo.”I was reminded of this terrible thing by the fact that the Paris Theater here in New York just showed “Vertigo” as part of its highly-recommended BIG LOUD 2024 series, and in turn, I revisited the novel on which it was based.Often, it’s true, the book really is better. Other times, an adaptation takes workmanlike text and transforms it into something transcendent (hello, “Godfather”). Occasionally, a filmmaker and their subject are so perfectly matched that the result is more than the sum of its parts — looking at you, “The Road.” And sometimes, movies are just perfect reflections of the texts; I’d put “The Remains of the Day” in this category (although of course we could debate it for years).What I want to talk about today are two cases where the movie made me aware of the source book — a book I might otherwise have never read.— Sadie“The Living and the Dead,” by Boileau-NarcejacFiction, 1956NoneParis, 1940. A lawyer named Roger Flavières — who has a morbid fear of heights — is approached by an old friend whose wife, Madeleine, has been acting strangely; she seems to be possessed by the spirit of an ancestor who died by suicide at the same age. Roger begins to tail the beautiful Madeleine and ultimately saves her from drowning in the Seine. The two bond; she explains her melancholy obsession. Ultimately, Madeleine feels drawn to a remote village, where she throws herself from a bell tower. Roger, paralyzed by his phobia, can only watch helplessly.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

Some of the best advice Democrats have received recently came from Bill Clinton in his speech at the Democratic National Convention.First, he warned against hubris: “We’ve seen more than one election slip away from us when we thought it couldn’t happen, when people got distracted by phony issues or overconfident.” That’s something that any Clinton understands in his — or her — gut.Second, related and even more important, he cautioned against demeaning voters who don’t share liberal values.“I urge you to meet people where they are,” said Clinton, who knows something about winning votes outside of solid blue states. “I urge you not to demean them, but not to pretend you don’t disagree with them if you do. Treat them with respect — just the way you’d like them to treat you.”That’s critical counsel because too often since 2016, the liberal impulse has been to demonize anyone at all sympathetic to Donald Trump as a racist and bigot. This has been politically foolish, for it’s difficult to win votes from people you’re disparaging.It has also seemed to me morally offensive, particularly when well-educated and successful elites are scorning disadvantaged, working-class Americans who have been left behind economically and socially and in many cases are dying young. They deserve empathy, not insults.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

When Kamala Harris took the stage in Chicago last week, she spoke of her “trailblazer” mother and her encouraging father — “Don’t let anything stop you.” She told of how the sexual abuse of her best friend led her to become a prosecutor. She encouraged people to imagine abortion rights being restored in a Harris presidency. What she did not do, as she described her “unlikely journey,” was state the obvious — and that silence spoke volumes.As the first Black woman and first South Asian to receive a major party nomination, she was all but expected to talk about her candidacy as a historic first. She could have easily tipped her hat to the galvanizing power of “representation” or referred to the “highest, hardest glass ceiling” that Hillary Clinton had tried so hard to shatter. Some enthusiastic delegates had dressed in suffragist white, but she was not among them. She wore a dark navy suit. That color, too, spoke volumes.We’re only beginning to grapple with the audacity of what Kamala Harris is doing: She’s trying to take identity politics out of presidential politics. Don’t get me wrong, Ms. Harris is savvy enough to know how important identity is in America today. But if identity is in, gender and racial politics are out. As she put it on CNN on Thursday night, when asked during her first interview as the Democratic nominee to respond to Donald Trump’s attacks on her identity: “Same old tired playbook — next question.”She aspires to be the first post-gender POTUS. So many American voters loathe being asked to assess their candidates through the lens of gender and race, and they cringe at the performative nature of identity politics — including, yes, Mrs. Clinton and that ever-present glass ceiling, as well as the argument that her supporters were “voting with their vaginas” if they dared to feel inspired by it.The metaphor may have yielded feel-good empowerment for a while — and lots of clever merch — but we all know the outcome. And how many times can you declare “The future is female,” tattered sign in hand, before it starts to get awkward?Ms. Harris is a woman, and a Black woman, and a woman of Jamaican and South Asian descent, and the first woman to be vice president. But we know all that. Other people can talk about history; she’ll be too busy making it.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