Elections

In Chicago, venues are booking fast for the Democratic convention in August. But Milwaukee, host of the Republican convention, is wondering if customers will come.Dan Jacobs, a contestant on the newest season of “Top Chef,” is having a national star turn with his soups, cheese treats and elevated snacks — and his open struggle with a rare degenerative disease.But that publicity has not translated to a surge of prospective customers booking soirees at his Milwaukee restaurants, DanDan and EsterEv, ahead of the Republican National Convention, which is just three months away.“We haven’t gotten one single inquiry, like nothing,” said the restaurateur. “That’s where I think everybody’s like, ‘What’s going on?’”With the Republican convention slated to kick off in Milwaukee on July 15, some of the city’s biggest and most sought-after restaurants, concert halls and other venues are alarmed at how slowly the expected events around the gathering are taking shape.Birch, whose chef, Kyle Knall, has twice been nominated for a James Beard Award for the best chef in the Midwest, has no signed contracts, and indeed has received only one inquiry, restaurant management said. The gracious, old-world Pabst and Riverside theaters also remain unbooked, according to entertainment industry officials. Leslie West, who co-owns and runs the Rave, Eagles Club and Eagles Ballroom, said she had given up and would “just book our own shows during the R.N.C. time period, no need to stress about it.”“We’re seeing what everyone else is seeing,”said Adam Siegel, whose restaurant, Lupi & Iris, is finalizing contracts on two 100-plate brunches but has not seen the complete restaurant buyouts he was expecting. “There’s no sense of security that it will move forward in the way that most conventions move forward.”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

Inside the costly competition to attract TV and film shoots. State governments use our tax dollars to build roads, fund schools and provide health care. In 38 states, they also ship money off to a high-gloss private industry: Hollywood.And it’s a lot of money. My colleague Christopher Kuo and I found that those states had given out more than $25 billion over the past two decades to subsidize the making of movies and television. The idea is to lure businesses to spend money, employ locals and stimulate the economy.The problem is, the programs are actually huge money losers for states. Studies show that these efforts typically return a quarter or even a dime on every dollar given to studios.Yet lawmakers are not slowing their spending. Quite the opposite. Hollywood is playing states off one another, and the competition has them sweetening their deals to lure productions, economists say. Under mounting pressure from New Jersey, New York recently expanded its film incentive program by 67 percent, to $700 million. Oklahoma went from $4 million to $30 million in just three years, in part to stay competitive with Texas. Then, Texas decided to spend nearly seven times that amount.“You could find almost an unlimited number of better uses for the same dollars,” said Michael Thom, a tax expert at the University of Southern California. “Who on earth would say, ‘Keep giving the money to Hollywood; my kid’s school doesn’t need new books’?”My colleagues and I wanted to understand why these programs persist. This morning, we published the third article in our series about the topic. Here’s a quick look at what we found.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

Jack D’Isidoro and Anna Diamond and Sophia Lanman and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | SpotifyChris Kerr was 12 when he first observed a deathbed vision. His memory of that summer in 1974 is blurred, but not the sense of mystery he felt at the bedside of his dying father. Throughout Kerr’s childhood in Toronto, his father, a surgeon, was too busy to spend much time with his son, except for an annual fishing trip they took, just the two of them, to the Canadian wilderness. Gaunt and weakened by cancer at 42, his father reached for the buttons on Kerr’s shirt, fiddled with them and said something about getting ready to catch the plane to their cabin in the woods. “I knew intuitively, I knew wherever he was, must be a good place because we were going fishing,” Kerr told me.Kerr now calls what he witnessed an end-of-life vision. His father wasn’t delusional, he believes. His mind was taking him to a time and place where he and his son could be together, in the wilds of northern Canada.Kerr followed his father into medicine, and in the last 10 years he has hired a permanent research team that expanded studies on deathbed visions to include interviews with patients receiving hospice care at home and with their families, deepening researchers’ understanding of the variety and profundity of these visions.There are a lot of ways to listen to ‘The Daily.’ Here’s how.We want to hear from you. Tune in, and tell us what you think. Email us at [email protected]. Follow Michael Barbaro on X: @mikiebarb. And if you’re interested in advertising with The Daily, write to us at [email protected] production for The Sunday Read was contributed by Isabella Anderson, Anna Diamond, Sarah Diamond, Elena Hecht, Emma Kehlbeck, Tanya Pérez and Krish Seenivasan. More

There was anxiety in the thin mountain air when the planet’s economic leaders gathered in January at Davos for the 54th meeting of the World Economic Forum. Donald Trump had just trounced Nikki Haley in the Iowa caucuses, all but securing the Republican nomination for president. Haley was reliable, a known quantity. A resurgent Trump, on the other hand, was more worrying.Listen to this article, read by Edoardo BalleriniOpen this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.The Davos attendees needed reassurance, and Jamie Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, had some to offer. In an interview with CNBC that made headlines around the world, Dimon praised Trump’s economic policies as president. “Be honest,” Dimon said, sitting against a backdrop of snow-dusted evergreens, dressed casually in a dark blazer and polo shirt. “He was kind of right about NATO, kind of right on immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Trade. Tax reform worked. He was right about some of China.” Asked which of the likely presidential candidates would be better for business, he opted not to pick a side.“I will be prepared for both,” he said. “We will deal with both.”Dimon presides over the largest and most profitable bank in the United States and has done so for nearly 20 years. Maybe more than any single individual, he stands in for the Wall Street establishment and, by extension, corporate America. With his comments at Davos, he seemed to be sending a message of good will to Trump on their behalf. But he also appeared to be trying to put his fellow globalists at ease, reassuring them that America, long a haven for investors fleeing risk in less-stable democracies, would remain a safe destination for their money in a second Trump administration.Jamie Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, here testifying before Congress in 2023, has attempted to reassure global business leaders the economy would remain stable during a second Trump administration.Evelyn Hockstein/ReutersBut would it? As Dimon noted, for all Trump’s extreme rhetoric in the 2016 campaign — his threats to rip up America’s international trade agreements and his attacks on “globalization” and the “financial elite” — his presidency, like most presidencies, proved to be business-friendly. Corporate America wound up with plenty of allies in the administration, from Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs executive; to Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, a Harvard Business School-educated bankruptcy guru; to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, an aspiring Wall Street player. And the Trump administration’s economic agenda of reduced taxes and deregulation largely suited corporate America’s interests; JPMorgan saved billions of dollars a year thanks to Trump’s corporate tax cuts.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

John B. McLemore, the brilliant and quirky star of the hit podcast “S-Town,” is the center of a show highlighting his work in the art of clock restoration.John B. McLemore, a profanely outspoken, brilliant and troubled restorer of antique clocks, emerged a national figure in 2017 with the podcast “S-Town.” As a horologist — a repairer of devices that measure time — he restored intricate and rare pieces in a workshop at his family homestead in rural western Alabama.But that was just part of the story.In short order, “S-Town” hit 40 million downloads, and has since surpassed 100 million, making it among the most downloaded podcasts.For those who missed this unusual tale, there will be no major spoilers here. It’s enough to say that McLemore, and many in his orbit, were vaulted from obscurity to sometimes painful visibility.(Tyler Goodson, a prominent character in the podcast, was killed in a police shootout in December. Jeff Dodson, the mayor of Woodstock, the hamlet where “S-Town” takes place, said he hasn’t received an update on the police investigation of the shooting.)Before “S-Town,” McLemore was known to collectors of rare clocks, earning fame as an unlikely genius who could diagnose mechanical trouble and revive one-of-a-kind antique timepieces.One of those collectors, William R. Tatum, was close to “John B.,” as friends called him. Tatum — referred to only as Bill in the podcast — entrusted McLemore with many of his prized clocks. An exhibition of 34 of those pieces, all restored by McLemore, runs through April 30 at the National Watch & Clock Museum in Columbia, Pa. 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

Ed Willson has a jar filled with dirt sitting on his desk.For more than 40 years, Mr. Willson has been a fan of the minor league baseball team in Eugene, Ore., the Emeralds, and a season-ticket holder for 22 seasons. He was crushed when Civic Stadium, the longtime home of the team, burned to the ground in 2015. “It was a serious heartbreak,” Mr. Willson said.After the fire, Mr. Willson made a pilgrimage to the scorched diamond, where he filled a plastic bag with dirt from the pitcher’s mound that he considered sacred. He planned to give it to the team when it began construction on its new stadium.Nine years later, the dirt is still on Mr. Willson’s desk. The Emeralds are still without a permanent home. And there’s a risk that the team, after 69 seasons, may leave town altogether.Although the Emeralds (also known for their Sasquatch mascot, Sluggo) have survived wildfires, losing seasons, recessions, Major League Baseball’s 2020 reorganization of the minor leagues and Covid, they are a team without a ballpark.And the debate about the Emeralds’ fate — in the birthplace of Nike, no less — is a testament to the struggle for affordable, in-person sports to survive in the current Gilded Age.Nor are the Emeralds the only minor league baseball team that has reached a crisis point as a result of a ballpark problem. In 2020, Major League Baseball imposed new guidelines for its minor league stadiums. They include LED lighting, changing rooms for women, new fencing, expanded training facilities and a larger clubhouse. Those fixes are pricey.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 actress makes her Broadway debut in “Mary Jane” as the single mother of a seriously ill child. She views her acting choices as expanding her orbit.From the outside, you wouldn’t know that Rachel McAdams, the thoughtfully charming star of blockbuster rom-coms, rom-drams, a Marvel franchise and the Oscar-winning “Spotlight,” has been wondering about death.Maybe it has to do with the therapist who said that her indecisiveness and deep curiosity about seeing through someone else’s eyes, which she’s harbored since childhood, could be chalked up to something called “death anxiety.”McAdams had long viewed her acting choices as expanding her orbit. “It’s been a way to live a lot of lives in one,” she said. If that was about a fear of dying — well, it didn’t rattle her.Instead, characteristically, she embraced it. “We don’t have a lot of great coping mechanisms for death in our culture,” she said. “So, yeah, I kind of welcome the opportunity to lean into that — earlier rather than later. Let’s get cozy with it. Let’s get cozy with that next adventure.”Death hovers like a specter around her latest role, as the single mother of a seriously ill child, in the play “Mary Jane.” McAdams hasn’t done theater since college; she makes her Broadway debut as the title character in this Manhattan Theater Club production, which began previews April 2 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater. It’s by the busy playwright Amy Herzog, who also adapted Broadway’s show of the moment, Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People.”“Mary Jane” is the first of her own deceptively spare plays to appear on Broadway, after a celebrated run in 2017 at New York Theater Workshop. Dotted (surprisingly) with laugh lines, it’s about the daily muck and lasting profundity of caregiving, a nitty-gritty subject that’s rarely dramatized. “A heartbreaker for anyone human,” Jesse Green wrote in his New York Times review.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

For several hours on Saturday evening, drivers on a typically scenic stretch of Palm Beach, Fla., had their views of the coast obscured by a line of luxury vehicles whose owners were mingling inside a mansion across the road.The shoreline-blocking Range Rovers, Aston Martins and Bentleys hinted at the deep-pocketed donors attending a fund-raising dinner for former President Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign, which it and the Republican National Committee said had raised more than $50.5 million.The event, hosted by the billionaire John Paulson at his home, followed a concerted push by the Trump campaign to address a longstanding financial disparity with President Biden and Democrats as both parties gear up for the general election.The reported total, which cannot be independently verified ahead of campaign finance filings in the coming months, is nearly double the $26 million that President Biden’s campaign said it raised last month at a celebrity-studded event at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, senior advisers to the former president who are effectively his campaign managers, said in a statement that the total made it “clearer than ever that we have the message, the operation and the money to propel President Trump to victory on November 5.”Mr. Trump’s event, just down the road from his home at Mar-a-Lago, was in some ways a less flashy affair than its Democratic antecedent, one that traded Hollywood star power and New York City energy for a warmer clime, an abundance of palm trees and the manicured lawns typical of an island refuge for the moneyed elite.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