Aurelia Butler

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    US-Brazil Tariffs: What to Know About Trump’s History With Bolsonaro

    The fight is rooted in years of political history between President Trump and the last two presidents of Brazil.The Western Hemisphere’s two largest nations appear headed for a full-blown trade war — with a twist.President Trump on Wednesday pledged to impose 50 percent tariffs on Brazilian imports. His rationale wasn’t entirely economic — the United States has a trade surplus with Brazil — but political. Mr. Trump said Brazil was carrying out a “witch hunt” against his political ally, former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing trial for attempting a coup.A few hours later, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil said his government would respond with its own tariffs on U.S. imports. “Brazil is a sovereign nation with independent institutions and will not accept any form of tutelage,” he said in a statement.Brazil is weighing tariffs on specific American products or sectors, according to a senior Brazilian official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss closed meetings. Seeking to minimize any jolt to Brazil’s economy, the government does not plan to apply broad-based tariffs on all American products, the official said.The feud is the latest in a long-running saga involving Mr. Trump, Mr. Bolsonaro and Mr. Lula, and it shows how Mr. Trump is using tariffs to settle scores against his political enemies.Here’s what you need to know:What did Trump threaten, and why?What products does Brazil export to the U.S.?What is Trump’s history with Bolsonaro and Lula?What is the case against Bolsonaro?What happens next?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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    Espaillat Endorses Mamdani for Mayor, After Backing Cuomo and Adams

    Representative Adriano Espaillat, the most powerful Latino leader in New York City, will back Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for mayor.Zohran Mamdani, the front-runner in the New York City mayor’s race, will be endorsed on Thursday by Representative Adriano Espaillat, the city’s most powerful Latino leader and one of the most influential among voters.His support follows endorsements for Mr. Mamdani from other prominent New York Democrats, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and major unions as he seeks to broaden his coalition ahead of the general election in November.Mr. Espaillat said in a statement that Mr. Mamdani brought “clarity, discipline and a deep commitment to tackling the stubborn issues facing New York City,” including affordability.“He has a strong vision of how to make New York serve those working to realize the American dream,” he said. “I’m proud to endorse him because New Yorkers deserve a mayor who will wake up every day and fight for them.”Landing the backing of Mr. Espaillat, who is the first Dominican American member of Congress and who represents northern Manhattan and the Bronx, is significant for symbolic and practical reasons.He is the latest member of the New York congressional delegation to back Mr. Mamdani, joining Representatives Nydia Velázquez and Jerrold Nadler and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Others, most notably Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, and Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, have not endorsed anyone in the race.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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    What Democrats Can Learn From Mamdani’s Victory

    Beyond his social media talent and approaches on affordability and Israel, Democratic voters have been inching to the left for years.Zohran Mamdani is more than a viral video star. Shuran Huang for The New York TimesUsually, there isn’t much to learn from a single idiosyncratic primary election.In the case of the recent New York mayoral contest, most candidates will not be able to replicate Zohran Mamdani’s viral campaign, and not many candidates will have Andrew Cuomo’s heavy baggage.Such a superficial analysis of the candidates might be enough to tell the tale for many primaries. But not this one. The New York Democratic mayoral primary was about much more than the strengths and weaknesses of the two candidates, and as a consequence there’s a lot more to learn.Just consider how many political, demographic, economic and technological changes over the last decade helped make Mr. Mamdani’s victory possible. There was the Bernie Sanders campaign and the rise of a new democratic socialist left, along with a growing number of young millennial and Gen Z voters. There was the founding of TikTok and the rise of vertical video, #MeToo, Israel’s war in Gaza, the rising cost of housing and even halalflation.There’s room to debate the relative contributions of these and other factors to Mr. Mamdani’s victory. What can’t be disputed is that these developments helped him enormously, but even on the day of the election it was not obvious that these changes would be enough to put him over the top.Of all these changes, the most obvious one is that the Democratic electorate has simply moved farther to the left. Over the last few years, this hasn’t always been obvious. To many, the last presidential election seemed to mark a new rightward turn in the culture, including among the young voters who had powered the ascent of progressives. Looking even further back, progressives mostly seemed to stall after Mr. Sanders’s breakthrough in 2016, including in New York City.Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton in a 2015 debate.Josh Haner/The New York TimesWe 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, Urged to Keep Tisch as Police Commissioner, Is Considering It

    As Zohran Mamdani runs for mayor in the general election, some leaders are encouraging him to keep Jessica Tisch as New York City’s police commissioner.Zohran Mamdani, the front-runner to be the next mayor of New York, and Jessica Tisch, the city’s police commissioner, might not seem like natural allies.He is a democratic socialist who has questioned whether billionaires should exist. She is a billionaire heiress who has called for stricter criminal justice laws.But if Mr. Mamdani wins November’s general election, both appear open to working together — a potential partnership being pushed by influential business leaders and some of Mr. Mamdani’s more powerful Democratic allies.Mr. Mamdani, a state assemblyman who decisively won the Democratic primary last month, has said he would consider keeping Commissioner Tisch, and has praised her on the campaign trail and in private for improving public safety and running the Police Department more responsibly after the tumult of Mayor Eric Adams’s first term.Ms. Tisch, in turn, believes that she has made progress in making the city safer since taking command of the department seven months ago, and would want to stay in the job regardless of the outcome of the November election, according to two people familiar with her thinking.The leaders who have encouraged Mr. Mamdani to keep the commissioner include Letitia James, the state attorney general, according to a person familiar with the matter. Ms. James has enthusiastically endorsed Mr. Mamdani.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 Officials Take Steps to Target Comey and Brennan, Who Investigated Trump

    It is unclear whether moves targeting the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and the former C.I.A. director John O. Brennan will lead to charges.The Trump administration appears to be targeting officials who oversaw the investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s connections to Russia, examining the actions of the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and the former C.I.A. director John O. Brennan, according to people familiar with the situation.John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director and a harsh critic of his Democratic-appointed predecessors, has made a criminal referral of Mr. Brennan to the F.B.I., accusing him of lying to Congress, officials said. The bureau is also scrutinizing Mr. Comey for his role in the Russia investigation, other officials said, although the exact basis for any inquiry remains unclear.Even if it is unclear whether the moves will lead to charges, they are among the most significant indications that President Trump’s appointees intend to follow through on his campaign to exact retribution against his perceived enemies. That includes people leading the investigation into what he has repeatedly denounced as the “Russia hoax” nine years ago and officials involved in two failed federal prosecutions of Mr. Trump during the Biden years.This all comes at a precarious moment for the appointed leadership of federal law enforcement agencies. Since Monday, Trump supporters on the far right have lashed out at Attorney General Pam Bondi and F.B.I. brass for closing the investigation into the death of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Those same allies have called for aggressive investigations of Trump investigators.C.I.A. and F.B.I. officials declined to comment. A Justice Department spokeswoman wrote in a statement that it did not comment on “ongoing investigations.”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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    Zohran Mamdani Expands Campaign Team, Hiring Veteran Democrat

    Mr. Mamdani, a state assemblyman and the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, is taking on a small handful of more experienced campaign hands.Zohran Mamdani powered his way to an upset in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City with the help of a small clutch of loyalists. Now, as he turns to the general election, he is taking the first steps to expand his orbit.Mr. Mamdani will announce on Wednesday that he has hired Jeffrey Lerner, a former political director of the Democratic National Committee and senior Senate aide, to serve as his new communications director. Mr. Lerner, 47, also once worked for Mr. Mamdani’s primary rival, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.Andrew Epstein, who had been overseeing both news and social media for the campaign, will shift into a new role as its creative director, overseeing a team producing the kind of viral narrative videos that helped catapult Mr. Mamdani past his opponents in the primary.Deandra Khan, a top operative at Local 32BJ SEIU, also recently joined the campaign’s political operation.“We are growing, we are maturing as a campaign,” Mr. Epstein, 38, said, indicating that more hires were expected in the coming weeks.The selections could be especially consequential for Mr. Mamdani, a 33-year-old state lawmaker who is still trying to assure segments of his own party that he is prepared to lead the nation’s largest city. He also has to win an unusually volatile general election against Mayor Eric Adams, an independent, and others including Mr. Cuomo, who is considering a third-party challenge.Mr. Lerner, a Democratic campaign veteran, was most recently a managing director at Actum, a political consulting and lobbying firm. In the Obama White House and at the D.N.C., he worked closely with Patrick Gaspard, a senior party official who has played a growing role advising Mr. Mamdani.Mr. Lerner, who lives in Washington, said he had reached out to the campaign to offer his services after Mr. Mamdani’s primary victory. He said that the candidate had “reshaped the political conversation in New York City, and indeed, the nation,” and called him “New York City’s most savvy socialist.”He served as Mr. Cuomo’s communications director in 2007 during Mr. Cuomo’s first year as New York’s attorney general. In an interview, he said accounts of his former boss’s abrasive style were accurate in his experience and suggested he would talk more about that in the future.“I learned a lot about him as a prosecutor, a politician and person,” he said. “At this time, I have nothing to add to the wealth of reporting that accurately captures what it’s like to work for Andrew Cuomo.”In a statement, Mr. Mamdani said the new aide “shares our values and our commitment to make our city a place that is affordable and livable.” More

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    Eric Adams Asked Bill Ackman to Vet Campaign Manager Before Hiring Him

    Mr. Ackman and another hedge fund titan, Daniel S. Loeb, interviewed a potential campaign hire for Mayor Adams, who is courting their financial support.As Mayor Eric Adams of New York City searched for a new campaign manager, he asked his leading candidate to sit for private interviews with two crusading hedge fund titans he wants to bankroll his re-election effort.The billionaire financiers, Bill Ackman and Daniel S. Loeb, had both met separately with Mr. Adams as they weighed potential large contributions. But the mayor’s decision to give them a say in who he hired to run his campaign illustrates the remarkable lengths he is willing to go to secure their support.Mr. Ackman and Mr. Loeb have collectively given millions of dollars to Democratic and Republican candidates over the years and could meaningfully boost the mayor’s flagging candidacy if they were to cut large checks to a pro-Adams super PAC.Mr. Adams, who is running as an independent, enters the general election contest as a distinct underdog against Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee. The mayor’s approval ratings among New Yorkers are dismal after he faced federal corruption charges and then was accused of striking a deal with the Trump administration in order to get them dropped.Eugene Noh, the candidate interviewed separately by Mr. Ackman and Mr. Loeb, was announced on Tuesday as Mr. Adams’s new campaign manager, part of a slate of hires. The Daily News reported the news of Mr. Noh’s hiring, but the involvement of Mr. Ackman and Mr. Loeb — who vocally oppose Mr. Mamdani — has not been previously disclosed.Frank Carone, Mr. Adams’s campaign chairman, confirmed that the mayor’s team had asked the businessmen, and other unnamed supporters, to speak with Mr. Noh in recent days to make sure they were comfortable with him. He stressed that they did not have veto power over the hire.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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    French Police Raid National Rally Over Campaign Finances

    The authorities said they were investigating whether the nationalist, anti-immigrant party broke France’s campaign-finance rules.The police raided the headquarters of France’s far-right National Rally party on Wednesday as part of an investigation into its campaign finances, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.No one has been charged in the investigation, which was opened in July 2024 and aims to determine whether the nationalist, anti-immigrant party ran afoul of campaign-finance rules for France’s 2022 elections and the 2024 European elections.The investigation was the latest in a series of allegations of financial impropriety against the party. It adds to the persistent uncertainty that has dogged French politics in recent months as parties gear up for a 2027 presidential race.The National Rally, which has grown more powerful in recent years, has denied any wrongdoing and on Wednesday denounced the investigation as politically motivated.“This deployment of force has only one aim: to put on a show for the news channels, to search the private correspondence of the leading opposition party, to seize all our internal documents,” Jordan Bardella, the National Rally’s president, said on X. “Nothing to do with justice, everything to do with politics.”About 20 armed officers from France’s financial brigade took part in the raid, which was led by two investigative judges, according to Mr. Bardella.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