Elections

A panel of federal judges blocked Louisiana on Tuesday from using a newly drawn congressional map that had been designed to form a second district with a majority of Black voters, creating uncertainty just months before an election that could play a critical role in determining the balance of power in the House of Representatives.The new districts had been outlined in January during a special session of the State Legislature. Lawmakers had been ordered to sketch out the new boundaries after a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found that the previous map had very likely violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting power of Black residents.But in a 2-to-1 decision released on Tuesday, a separate panel of federal judges sided with challengers who argued that the new map was an “impermissible racial gerrymander” that violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment of the U.S. Constitution.The challenge had been brought by a group of residents scattered across the newly formed district who described themselves as “non-African American” voters. They argued that lawmakers had moved to “segregate voters based entirely on their races” and that to achieve that, they had stitched together “communities in far-flung regions of Louisiana.”Critics assailed the ruling on Tuesday, saying that it threatened vital protections for voters of color. “The court’s ruling today unnecessarily puts Louisianians’ right to vote in a very precarious position,” Eric H. Holder Jr., the former U.S. attorney general and current chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement.The court will hold a hearing on May 6 to discuss which boundaries will be used in the coming election.“We will of course be seeking Supreme Court review,” Louisiana’s attorney general, Liz Murrill, wrote on social media. “I’ve said all along the Supreme Court needs to clear this up.” More

The firm, LaRocca Hornik, has represented Donald Trump’s political operation in numerous suits dating to his first presidential run, including a pregnancy discrimination case in New York.A law firm that has long defended Donald J. Trump’s campaign and businesses from employment lawsuits has abruptly asked to withdraw from a yearslong case over what it calls an “irreparable breakdown in the attorney-client relationship.”The firm — LaRocca, Hornik, Greenberg, Rosen, Kittridge, Carlin and McPartland — has represented Mr. Trump’s political operation in numerous suits dating to his first presidential run, helping secure several settlements and dismissals and billing nearly $3 million in the process.But late on Friday, it asked a federal magistrate judge to allow it to withdraw from a suit filed by a former campaign surrogate, A.J. Delgado, who says she was sidelined by the campaign in 2016 after revealing she was pregnant. The timing of the motion was notable, just two days after the same federal court had ordered the campaign to turn over in discovery all complaints of sexual harassment and gender or pregnancy discrimination from the 2016 and 2020 campaigns — materials that the defendants have long resisted handing over.A.J. Delgado in 2016.via YouTubeIn the request, filed in federal court in Manhattan, the lead lawyer, Jared Blumetti, did not provide any details about the dispute, asking permission to “explain” the matter privately with the judge. Mr. Blumetti did not respond to a request for comment.The apparent rupture with a long-trusted firm comes at a busy time, legally speaking, for the former president.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

Juliana Tringali Golden nips our worries in the bud.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesWEDNESDAY PUZZLE — After being ground down by last week’s wickedly challenging Wednesday puzzle, I was bracing myself to receive a similar thrashing in Juliana Tringali Golden’s crossword. To my relief, Ms. Golden’s grid was comparatively uncomplicated, and the search for themed entries made me smile, rather than suffer.This puzzle is also aptly themed for a certain holiday that many countries celebrate on May 1. Does that give you any scents of what to expect?Today’s ThemeAt 1A: The “Disney princess who sings ‘A Whole New World’” is JASMINE. At 8A, a “Basic yoga position” is LOTUS. These answers are two examples of WALLFLOWERS, a term that refers to “Shy sorts” and here describes “the answers on this puzzle’s perimeter.”What’s the name of a flower that might appear at a “Rainbow’s end” (39D), for instance? VIOLET. How about one for an “East Egg resident in ‘The Great Gatsby’” (48D)? It wouldn’t be Jay or Nick, but DAISY. Most of these flower names are garden-variety (yuk, yuk), but you can reveal a couple of the trickier ones below.67A. “Scented ingredient in some hand creams and shampoos”FREESIAWe 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 victory by Timothy Kennedy, a Democratic state senator, was not a surprise. But it will make Republicans’ lives more difficult in Washington.Timothy M. Kennedy, a Democratic New York State senator, easily won a special House election on Tuesday to replace a retiring congressman in western New York, according to The Associated Press.The victory was hardly a surprise. Democrats have controlled the Buffalo-area district for decades. And Mr. Kennedy outspent his Republican opponent, Gary Dickson, by an eye-popping 47 to 1.But his victory will have an immediate impact on the House at a time when Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana is laboring to hold onto a narrow Republican majority and fend off a rebellion on his right flank.Once Mr. Kennedy is seated, Mr. Johnson’s margin will effectively shrink to just a single, tenuous vote on partisan issues. A handful of special elections in Wisconsin, Ohio, Colorado and California are expected to offer Republicans reinforcements, but not until this summer.In the meantime, Mr. Kennedy, 47, is expected to provide a reliably liberal vote. He campaigned on a familiar Democratic platform, promising to fight for federal infrastructure dollars for a region that has struggled economically, for federal abortion rights and against former President Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee to face President Biden this fall.Mr. Dickson, a former F.B.I. agent and local town supervisor, ran a relatively moderate campaign for a Republican in the Trump era. He had endorsed the former president, but called the Jan. 6 Capitol riot “a travesty.” He supported Ukraine’s war against Russia and federal investment in transportation projects, spending priorities that more conservative Republicans forcefully oppose.But it was not enough to win over a district that counts more than twice as many Democrats as Republicans. With 62 percent of the votes counted, Mr. Kennedy was beating Mr. Dickson by 34 percentage points, 67 to 33.The seat was vacated in February by the retirement of Brian Higgins, a moderate Democrat who had represented the Buffalo area for 19 years.Mr. Higgins, who left the job early to lead Shea’s Performing Arts Center in Buffalo, was part of a wave of seasoned lawmakers from both parties heading toward the exits this year. Like many others, Mr. Higgins, 64, cited an increasingly toxic and unproductive environment on Capitol Hill.Mr. Kennedy is a former occupational therapist who has served in the New York State Senate since 2011. In Albany, he led an important legislative committee on transportation and supported a tough package of gun safety measures after a racist shooter killed 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket in 2022. He also earned a reputation as a prolific fund-raiser.He was selected directly by party leaders as the Democratic nominee to serve the remainder of Mr. Higgins’s term. Mr. Kennedy will likely remain in campaign mode this year, with a Democratic primary in June and November’s general election still ahead.The district sweeps north from Buffalo, including the city, many of its suburbs and Niagara Falls. More

Albuquerque Public Schools in New Mexico also installed an acting principal as it investigates a high school prom.A school district in Albuquerque, N.M., has placed employees at a high school on leave and installed a new acting principal as it investigates a performance by a drag queen at the prom this month.Video on TikTok from the Atrisco Heritage Academy High School prom, held at a convention center on April 20, and published by an NBC affiliate, KOB 4, showed the drag performer in boots, stockings and a body suit dancing as the students were gathered around, watching.On April 24, as the school’s Facebook page was flooded with comments that the show was inappropriate for minors, Channell Segura, the chief of schools at Albuquerque Public Schools, said in a letter to families that the district was investigating the performance to determine “what occurred and how students were impacted.”The letter was published by local news stations and provided to the Times on Tuesday.Another letter sent to families on April 25 named a new acting principal, Anthony Lovato, for the high school, according to the text published by KOAT, another local station. Mr. Lovato was apparently replacing the principal, identified as Irene Cisneros on the school’s website. Ms. Cisneros could not be reached by telephone on Tuesday.Martin Salazar, a district spokesman, said in an emailed statement on Tuesday that the letter about Mr. Lovato was correct but he did not provide a copy. “We cannot comment on any specific personnel matters,” he said. “We can, however, confirm that employees have been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.”A person who answered the phone at the school on Tuesday said Ms. Cisneros was not at the school but gave no details.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

Every Tuesday and Friday, Ezra Klein invites you into a conversation about something that matters, like today’s episode with Hannah Ritchie. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.Transcripts of our episodes are made available as soon as possible. They are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.Is Green Growth Possible?The environmental data scientist Hannah Ritchie argues that climate technology is increasingly catching up to the world’s enormous need for clean energy.EZRA KLEIN: From New York Times Opinion, this is “The Ezra Klein Show.”[MUSIC PLAYING]I think one of the questions on which our whole future hinges is whether the lives that we have, the lives that we want, can exist within our environmental limits. Is there a way to live lives as energetically rich, as materially prosperous as Americans do now, without doing irreparable damage to the world? Is there a way for people all over to live lives even better than Americans do without doing irreparable damage to the world? Can we decouple material prosperity from the environment?If we can’t, then what we’re left with is a politics of sacrifice. Then we’re asking residents of rich countries to give up what they have. We’re asking residents of poor and middle income countries to give up what they want. There is no way around that. I’ve read the degrowth books. That is, in any honest rendering, what they are asking.And the politics of sacrifice, they’re abysmal. They’re really hard, particularly the speed at which we need to act on climate. You try passing a global carbon tax and enforcing it. You try doing energetic redistribution between rich and poor countries. You try banning, god forbid, hamburgers.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 West African country said it killed Abu Huzeifa, a commander in an Islamic State affiliate who was involved in a 2017 attack in neighboring Niger that killed American Green Berets and Nigerien forces.Mali said on Monday that it had killed a high-value Islamist commander who helped lead a 2017 attack in which four American and four Nigerien soldiers were killed alongside an interpreter.The U.S. State Department had put a $5 million bounty on the head of the commander, Abu Huzeifa — a member of an affiliate of the Islamic State — after his participation in an attack in Tongo Tongo, Niger, on American Green Berets and their Nigerien comrades.At that time, the attack was the largest loss of American troops during combat in Africa since the “Black Hawk Down” debacle in Somalia in 1993.In a post on social media on Monday, Mali’s armed forces said that on Sunday they had “neutralized a major terrorist leader of foreign nationality during a large-scale operation in Liptako” — a tri-border region that contains parts of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.Officials at the U.S. State and Defense Departments said on Tuesday that they are aware of the report, but are seeking more information.Mali has been in crisis since 2012, when rebels and jihadists took control of swaths of its desert north. The intervention of foreign forces — led by France, which deployed thousands of troops — failed to stop the unrest.In 2020, coup plotters overthrew Mali’s elected government, using the security crisis to justify their power grab. But since then the ruling junta has pursued the same military-first strategy that the foreign forces did, and nearly four years later, analysts say the situation is worse.After a ten-year fight against the Islamists, French troops pulled out in 2022. The junta in Mali turned instead to Russian military advisors and mercenaries with the Wagner group, who were accused of committing atrocities in the course of pursuing the militants.Eric Schmitt More

More from our inbox:China, America and the Climate ChallengeKids’ Reactions to the ‘Cringe-Worthy’ News TodayDebate Conditions Pablo DelcanTo the Editor:Re “Bravo! Hurray! Wahoo! (Meh.),” by John McWhorter (Opinion, April 16):The currency of the standing ovation is indeed seriously debased. The impulse to stand up during the ovation following a performance may in some cases represent a kind of unconscious one-upmanship. “I’m more sensitized than most people to the sublimity of what we all have just witnessed, and it is imperative that I separate myself from the underappreciative herd.”Needless to say, if other audience members follow suit by rising from their seats, then you can raise the ante by hoisting your clapping hands up from the standard mid-torso level to over your head — signifying that the artistry one is acknowledging is not just merely great, but really most sincerely great.I confess that although I invariably applaud performances, I usually “sit out” the competitive appreciation derby, and haul myself to my feet only if I feel particularly inspired. I avoid the over-the-head clapping mode at all times. Maybe this marks me as a philistine; I’ve been called worse.David EnglishActon, Mass.To the Editor:I admit that I’m often among the first to give a standing ovation. I always wondered why the holdouts would deny something so simple to these hardworking actors.You have to walk out of the theater a few minutes later anyway, so why not stretch your legs and participate with your fellow theatergoers in the shared joy of theater? Perhaps it’s generational, cultural or regional, or maybe it’s a combination.Jumping to my feet in appreciation of the actors’ hard work is my way of giving back, and it feels really good! I’m sure the actors like to feel the good will as well.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