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      Marjorie Taylor Greene Defiantly Rules Out a Senate Run in Georgia

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      In a lengthy Friday night social media screed, the Republican congresswoman savaged her party’s leaders as she declared she would not pursue a Senate run.Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, said on Friday that she would not run for Senate in 2026.The revelation — a huge relief to Republicans who feared she would challenge Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff and jeopardize their chance at defeating him — came 1,200 words deep into a screed against her party that Ms. Greene posted on social media on Friday night.In her tirade against the forces she blamed for standing in her way, Ms. Greene ripped the National Republican Senatorial Committee, G.O.P. consultants, pollsters, wealthy donors, the institution of the Senate and the Republican lawmakers who serve in it who she said “sabotage Trump’s agenda.”“No, Jon Ossoff isn’t the real problem,” Ms. Greene wrote in a post on X. “He’s just a vote. A pawn. No different than the Uniparty Republicans who skip key votes to attend fundraisers and let our agenda fail.”She added: “Someone once said, ‘The Senate is where good ideas go to die.’ They were right. That’s why I’m not running.”All eyes had tentatively turned to Ms. Greene this week after Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, the top potential recruit for the race, announced he would not run for the seat, a decision he made public at a gathering of wealthy donors in Sea Island, Ga.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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      Google Agrees to Pay $1.4 Billion to Settle 2 Privacy Lawsuits

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      The Texas attorney general brought the cases in 2022 under state laws.Google agreed to pay $1.4 billion to the State of Texas on Friday to settle two lawsuits accusing it of violating the privacy of state residents by tracking their locations and searches, as well as collecting their facial recognition information.The state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, who secured the settlement, brought the suits in 2022 under Texas laws related to data privacy and deceptive trade practices. Less than a year ago, he reached a $1.4 billion settlement with Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, over allegations it had illegally tagged users’ faces on its site.Google’s settlement is the latest legal setback for the tech giant. Over the past two years, Google has lost a string of antitrust cases after being found to have a monopoly over its app store, search engine and advertising technology. It has spent the past three weeks in the search case trying to fend off a U.S. government request to break up its business.“Big Tech is not above the law,” Mr. Paxton said in a statement.José Castañeda, a Google spokesman, said the company had already changed its product policies. “This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere,” he said.Privacy issues have become a major source of tension between tech giants and regulators in recent years. In the absence of a federal privacy law, states such as Texas and Washington have passed laws to curb the collection of facial, voice and other biometric data.Google and Meta have been the highest-profile companies challenged under those laws. Texas’ law, called Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier, requires companies to ask permission before using features like facial or voice recognition technologies. The law allows the state to impose damages of up to $25,000 per violation.The lawsuit filed under that law focused on the Google Photos app, which allowed people to search for photos of a particular person; Google’s Next camera, which could send alerts when it recognized visitors at a door; and Google Assistant, a virtual assistant that could learn up to six users’ voices and answer their questions.Mr. Paxton filed a separate lawsuit that accused Google of misleading Texans by tracking their personal location data, even after they thought they had disabled that feature. He added a complaint to that suit alleging that Google’s private browsing setting, which it called Incognito mode, wasn’t actually private. Those cases were brought under Texas’ Deceptive Trade Practices Act. More

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      A United Front for Pope Leo Among American Cardinals

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      One cardinal who cast his ballot said the pope’s choice of the papal name Leo might signal a particular interest in workers’ rights.American cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church described the historic papal conclave that concluded this week as relatively easy, with no arm-twisting or overt politicking.When their work was done — and as the outside world waited to learn the new pope’s identity — the cardinals inside the Sistine Chapel “went wild,” one recalled on Friday, when the man they had elected privately told them that he would take the name Leo.That name, they said, could be an indication of the pope’s plans.“Leo was the first modern pope, who spoke in defense of workers’ rights and what workers needed to have a just wage, not only to support their family and eke out a living, but also to build a patrimony they could pass on to their children,” said Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, referring Pope Leo XIII.That Pope Leo wrote a landmark papal document called Rerum Novarum in 1891, addressing the needs and dignity of the working class, which helped spark a social justice movement amid the Industrial Revolution.“It wasn’t the defense of the right to property for people to accumulate as much as they want, but for poor people who did not have property as a patrimony to pass on,” Cardinal Cupich said.The issues of workers rights, immigration and bridges across divides appear to be taking shape as the issues that could define the legacy of Robert Francis Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV.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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      Mexican Mayor Implicated in Drug Cartel Ranch Inquiry

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      The mayor of Teuchitlán is the first government official to have been arrested in connection with the case. Prosecutors accuse him of colluding with the cartel.The mayor of a small Mexican town has been accused of colluding with one of the country’s most violent drug cartels to operate a recruitment and training center that was uncovered in March.The mayor, José Asunción Murguía Santiago was charged with organized crime offenses and forced disappearance, prosecutors said at a hearing on Friday.The site of the center, in the western state of Jalisco, gained notoriety after volunteer searchers announced the discovery of hundreds of shoes piled together, heaps of clothing and what seemed to be human bone fragments found in an abandoned ranch surrounded by sugar cane fields in Teuchitlán, a town outside Guadalajara, sending shock waves across the nation. The searchers claimed the ranch was the site of human cremations, but authorities have since said there is no proof of that.The allegations against Mr. Murguía Santiago served as a stinging reminder of Mexican officials’ long history of collusion with organized crime, at a time when President Trump has proposed using American troops to crack down on cartels. Mexico’s president refused.Attorney General Alejandro Gertz said last week that until recently the ranch in Teuchitlán had been used by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel for training and recruiting. Mexican officials have said that the cartel lured new recruits with fake job offers to the ranch.But in a departure from previous comments, Mr. Gertz insisted that there was no proof of cremations carried out there, and said claims that the site had been an “extermination camp” were unfounded. Volunteer groups have disputed the federal findings, insisting that 17 batches of charred human remains, including teeth and bone fragments, have been recovered from the ranch.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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      Pope Leo XIV’s Creole Roots Tell a Story of New Orleans

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      “This is like a reward from God,” a local parishioner said, as researchers unearthed more details about the lives of Leo XIV’s ancestors in the heart of the city’s Afro-Caribbean culture.One day in June 1900, a census taker visited the New Orleans home of Joseph and Louise Martinez, Pope Leo XIV’s grandparents. They lived on North Prieur Street, just north of the French Quarter, a neighborhood considered the cradle of Louisiana’s Creole people of color.Joseph N. Martinez was recorded as a Black man, born in “Hayti.” His wife, two daughters and an aunt, were also marked “B” in a column denoting “color or race.”Ten years later, the census came knocking again. The family had grown — there were six daughters now. Other things changed, too: Mr. Martinez’s place of birth was listed this time as Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic. And the family’s race is recorded as “W,” for white.That simple switch, from “B” to “W,” suggests a complex, and very American, story.For much of the 19th century, New Orleans operated under a racial system that distinguished among white people, Black people and mixed-race Creole people like the Martinezes. But by the early 20th century, Jim Crow was the order of the day, and it tended to deal in black and white, with myriad restrictions imposed upon any person of color.The pope’s mother, Mildred Prevost, with her sons, left to right, Robert, John and Louis, outside Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago.via John Joseph PrevostThe selection of Robert Frances Prevost as the first pope from the United States, and the subsequent revelation of his Creole roots, have brought those historical realities to the fore — and an interview with the pope’s brother John Prevost, 71, connected them to the present day. More

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      Does Trump Have the Power to Install Jeanine Pirro as Interim U.S. Attorney?

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      By using another interim appointment to fill a vacancy for the top prosecutor in Washington, the White House is bypassing Senate confirmation and potentially claiming expansive authority.President Trump’s announcement that he was making the Fox News host Jeanine Pirro the interim U.S. attorney in Washington has raised questions about whether he had legitimate legal authority to do so.Under a federal law, the attorney general can appoint an interim U.S. attorney for up to 120 days. But soon after taking office in January, the Trump administration installed a Republican lawyer and political activist, Ed Martin, in that role.The question is whether presidents are limited to one 120-day window for interim U.S. attorneys, or whether they can continue unilaterally installing such appointees in succession — indefinitely bypassing Senate confirmation as a check on their appointment power. Here is a closer look.What is a U.S. attorney?A U.S. attorney, the chief law enforcement officer in each of the 94 federal judicial districts, wields significant power. That includes the ability to start a criminal prosecution by filing a complaint or by requesting a grand jury indictment. Presidents typically nominate someone to the role who must secure Senate confirmation before taking office.What is an interim U.S. attorney?When the position needs a temporary occupant, a federal statute says the attorney general may appoint an interim U.S. attorney who does not need to undergo Senate confirmation. The statute limits terms to a maximum of 120 days — or fewer, if the Senate confirms a regular U.S. attorney to fill the opening.Is the president limited to one 120-day window?This is unclear. The ambiguity underscores the aggressiveness of Mr. Trump’s move in selecting Ms. Pirro. Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that Democrats on the panel “will be looking into this.”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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      Nuclear-Armed India and Pakistan Have No Bridges Left to Burn

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      When India and Pakistan clash, the world too often dismisses it wearily as just another flare-up of age-old animosities over religion and Kashmir punctuated by inconclusive cross-border skirmishes. As President Trump recently put it — inaccurately — “They’ve had that fight for a thousand years in Kashmir,” and “probably longer than that.”This is somewhat understandable. Despite a few wars and many more scuffles between Muslim-majority Pakistan and predominantly Hindu India, confrontations have always been followed by negotiation and diplomacy, often facilitated by the United States. Even when serious fighting did erupt, established guardrails kept the two sides from coming too close to the unthinkable: using their nuclear weapons.That predictable cycle is a thing of the past. The immediate trigger for the military conflict now underway between the countries was a terrorist attack on Hindu tourists in Kashmir last month that killed 26 people. The incident’s rapid escalation into armed hostilities spotlights a profound and dangerous shift in the India-Pakistan rivalry in recent years that has eliminated the diplomatic space that had allowed the neighbors to avoid a devastating conflict.That shift can be traced to the two countries’ vastly different trajectories.India has emerged as a geopolitical and economic powerhouse and its Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, has cast it as not only a great nation, but an ascendant great civilization whose moment on the global stage has arrived. This has crystallized an uncompromising mind-set in which New Delhi increasingly views Pakistan not as a disruptive nuisance but an acute threat to India’s rightful rise. India has lost patience with Pakistan’s claim on the Indian-held half of Kashmir, the Muslim-majority region that each side calls its own, and its support of anti-India terrorism.Pakistan, on the other hand, has been mired for two decades in economic, political and security crises. One institution there reigns supreme: a powerful army that dominates decision-making and has very significant conventional and nuclear military capability. Although beleaguered, Pakistan, with its own ambitions to remain a regional power, is unwilling to back down against India and on issues such as Kashmir that are central to its national identity.In decades past, it was usually Indian restraint in the face of Pakistani actions that maintained an uneasy equilibrium. Even after deadly incidents such as the 2008 attack in Mumbai by Pakistan-based terrorists, which killed 166 people, India typically responded with moderation and periodic peace overtures.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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      After Criticism, Harris’s $900 Million Group Tries to Lay Out a Future

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      Future Forward, the big-money group supporting Kamala Harris’s presidential bid last year, resurfaced after her loss with an event in California.Ever since Vice President Kamala Harris lost the election in November, a big-money group that had raised over $900 million to support her but ultimately failed in its efforts has kept a low profile — even as Ms. Harris’s advisers have publicly second-guessed its approach to the campaign.But a closed-door conference this week hosted by the super PAC, Future Forward, at a luxury seaside hotel in California made plain that the group does not plan to fade away.Future Forward drew some of the biggest names in Democratic politics to the Ritz-Carlton resort in Half Moon Bay, Calif., south of San Francisco, to brief donors on what it thought went wrong last year — and what could come next.Attendees included potential future presidential candidates, such as Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, and seven-figure Democratic donors, some of whom had questions about why Future Forward was unable to help Ms. Harris win.At an event on Thursday with passed hors d’oeuvres like mini lobster rolls and short-rib tostones and a dinner featuring heirloom tomato carpaccio, beef tenderloin and seared sea bass, Chauncey McLean, the group’s leader, gestured to criticism of what he called the group’s “reputation” — a dependence on polling and testing and randomized trials.“Those are all just fancy ways of saying we listen to voters and try to gauge whether any of the things we do actually work,” Mr. McLean said, according to a person in the room. The group declined to comment.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