Elections

Josephine Wright, who died this year at 94, had been fighting to save family property. The developer, Bailey Point Investments, agreed to end the dispute, the family’s lawyer said.The family of a woman who fought a developer to keep their ancestral land in Hilton Head, S.C., has reached a settlement in the legal battle that recognized her ownership, a family lawyer said this week.Josephine Wright, who died in January at 94, had been leading the fight to retain rights to the land that had been in her husband’s family since the Civil War. Her quest had drawn support from celebrities, including Snoop Dogg and Kyrie Irving.The company that owns the development neighboring her property, Bailey Point Investment, had sued Ms. Wright in February 2023, claiming encroachment. The company said that her satellite dish, shed and screened porch trespassed on its land, which had “significantly delayed and hindered” development.The two parties had agreed on the terms of a settlement before Ms. Wright died in January, but the documents were not signed, so they had to wait until it was determined who would be authorized to sign on behalf of her estate, Roberts Vaux, the family’s lawyer said in an email.Mr. Vaux declined to provide details of the settlement, but said that the land that Ms. Wright claimed is “confirmed as hers.”A lawyer representing Bailey Point Investment did not immediately respond to requests for comment.A family spokeswoman, Altimese Nichole, told South Carolina Public Radio that the settlement requires that Bailey Point Investment stop contacting the family about acquiring the land and that it fix a roof on the property, put up a privacy fence and provide landscaping.Ms. Wright had previously told The New York Times that her husband inherited the 1.8-acre property from his parents, and that it was put in her name after he died in 1998.The property has been a gathering spot for Ms. Wright’s seven children, 40 grandchildren, 50 great-grandchildren and 16 great-great-grandchildren, she had said.Ms. Wright’s predicament, however, wasn’t all that unique among residents of Hilton Head, S.C., an island 100 miles from Charleston, S.C.Land in the area was owned by many Black families who had settled there long before developers arrived in the 1950s and made it a tourist destination, Mel Campbell, 75, a community elder previously told the Times. Many of the Black families were descendants of West and Central Africans who were enslaved and worked on rice, indigo and cotton plantations.Many families were offered large checks from developers for their land, Ms Wright said. She said that she had refused when she was offered $39,000 for the land years ago.Ms. Wright told The Times in August that the land’s value was not only monetary. “It’s a family thing,” she said then, “and we want to keep it that way forever.” More

Analysts say the Israeli military’s return to the largest hospital complex in the enclave may foretell more chaos without governance.Since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has repeatedly spoken of the need to topple Hamas but has done little to address the power vacuum that would leave — especially after Israeli forces withdraw.That is already apparent in Gaza City, where a deadly battle at the territory’s largest hospital complex stretched into a third day on Wednesday, after the Israeli military said the re-emergence of Hamas fighters had forced it to return to a site it first stormed in November.The military said on Wednesday that it had killed dozens of militants in the operation at Al-Shifa Hospital and questioned or arrested hundreds of people, while Hamas has said that it caused “deaths and injuries” to Israeli forces; neither account could be independently confirmed. The crossfire has endangered displaced people seeking shelter on the grounds, along with medical teams, patients and nearby residents.Former Israeli security officials are split on how to address the growing anarchy in northern Gaza, but many agree that until the government has a detailed, workable plan for how the enclave will be governed and made secure, it will be impossible to chart a path toward a more stable future. And they said Mr. Netanyahu should have long since developed such a plan.“It’s a huge mistake” not to have a governing plan now, said Gen. Gadi Shamni, a retired commander of the Gaza division of the Israeli Defense Forces. “It might take months or even years to create a successful alternative, but we need to start moving things in that direction.”Gazans on Wednesday mourned Palestinians killed in a strike in Gaza City.Dawoud Abu Alkas/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

At an Ohio rally this month, Donald Trump saluted the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, calling them “unbelievable patriots” and referring to those who’ve been locked up for their involvement on that terrible day as “hostages.”This was a continuation of Trump’s “Lost Cause” mythmaking that began during his successful presidential campaign in 2016 and was ramped up in service of his efforts to remain in power despite his 2020 loss and the deadly riot that those efforts stoked.More than 1,200 people have been charged related to Jan. 6. And though it shouldn’t have to be said, let’s be clear: Those who’ve been tried, convicted and imprisoned for storming the Capitol aren’t hostages, they’re criminals.But Lost Cause narratives aren’t about truth. They’re about negating the truth.Which is what happened when the Lost Cause mythology was constructed after the Civil War. The cause of the war was framed as “Northern aggression” rather than slavery. A lore about happy slaves and benevolent enslavers proliferated. The narrative valorized those who seceded from and fought against the United States.And it has survived to some degree for over 150 years, tucked into the cracks of our body politic. It still surfaces in ways that may seem remote from the Confederate Lost Cause myth, but that definitely promote it.It manifested itself last year when Florida changed its African American history standards to say that the enslaved “in some instances” benefited from their enslavement, and in Nikki Haley’s hesitance on the campaign trail to state the obvious, that slavery was the cause of the Civil War.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

Jake Sullivan met with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and his senior officials as additional U.S. aid continued to languish in the House.President Biden’s top national security official made a secret trip to Kyiv on Wednesday, as Ukrainian soldiers holding off Russian troops are running out of munitions and U.S. aid remains stalled in congressional gridlock.Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, met with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and his senior officials “to reaffirm the United States’ unwavering commitment to Ukraine in its self-defense against Russia’s brutal invasion,” said a national security spokeswoman, Adrienne Watson. “He stressed the urgent need for the U.S. House of Representatives to pass the national security supplemental to meet Ukraine’s critical battlefield needs.”The covert trip showed the rising sense of urgency in the White House to pressure Congress to pass billions of dollars of aid for Ukraine, a financial package that the Biden administration says the country needs to defend itself against Russia.The White House has tried, so far unsuccessfully, to push House Republicans to support a $60 billion emergency spending plan for weapons for Ukraine and to bolster armament production in the United States.With that funding held back and future U.S. aid in limbo, the administration last week sent Ukraine a $300 million package that included air defense interceptors, artillery rounds, armor systems and an older version of the Army’s longer-range missile systems known as ATACMS. But that package is most likely going to hold off Russia for only a matter of weeks, U.S. officials have said.“Ukrainian troops have fought bravely, are fighting bravely throughout this war,” Mr. Sullivan said when the package was announced, “but they are now forced to ration their ammunition under pressure on multiple fronts.”Mr. Sullivan’s visit came one day after Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III met with other backers of Ukraine in Germany to strategize on how to maintain military support for Kyiv.“Ukraine’s battle remains one of the great causes of our time,” Mr. Austin said. More

The partisan gridlock gumming up Washington has prompted states controlled by one party to set off on their own.The face-off between Texas and the federal government over whether the state can enforce its own immigration policy reflects a broader and recurring feature of American politics: a number of hot-button issues have become proxy battles over who gets to decide.During the Trump administration, Democratic-run states like California and blue cities like New York waged legal fights over their right to pass sanctuary laws to protect migrants. Now, the conflict over whether Texas can arrest and deport migrants is just one part of a larger campaign that red states have directed at the Biden administration.A coalition of Republican state attorneys general has also gone to court to thwart the administration’s efforts to regulate methane emissions from oil and gas drilling, to block a program that allows humanitarian entry to migrants from specific countries, and to halt an effort to crack down on gun accessories, among others.The balance of power between the national government and states has been a source of tensions in the United States since its founding, leading to the Civil War. But in the 21st century, as partisan polarization has intensified, it has morphed into a new dynamic, with states controlled by the party opposed to the president regularly testing the boundaries.The political issues run the gamut — and include topics like abortion, gun control, same-sex marriage and even marijuana legalization — but the larger pattern is clear: Whenever one party wins control of the central government, the other party uses its control of various states to try to resist national policies.“We’re seeing stuff we’ve never seen in the modern era,” said Heather K. Gerken, the dean of Yale Law School who has written about contemporary federalism. “It’s really stunning what kind of proxy war is taking place. It’s all because the vicious partisanship that has long been a feature of Washington has now filtered down to the states.”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 official result confirmed projections made after last month’s vote, which raised concerns about the vibrancy of the country’s democracy.The NewsA feared former general won last month’s presidential election in Indonesia, official results released on Wednesday showed, confirming unofficial projections.That candidate, Prabowo Subianto, who is now Indonesia’s defense minister, garnered 58.6 percent of the vote, according to the final tally by the General Election Commission.The result means that Mr. Prabowo, who was placed under a visa blacklist by the United States for about two decades over human rights abuses, won the election outright, avoiding a runoff with the second-place candidate.Although the official count is over, the process for Mr. Prabowo to be officially declared president-elect could be a protracted one. His opponents — Anies Baswedan, who had 24.9 percent of the vote, and Ganjar Pranowo, who took 16.5 percent — have said they plan to challenge the result.They accuse the outgoing president, Joko Widodo, of improperly influencing the election and claim widespread irregularities during the Feb. 14 vote. They have not provided proof of election-day impropriety but said they had evidence to prove their claims in court.Mr. Prabowo’s representatives reject these claims, noting that nearly every poll before the election showed him as the front-runner.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

A new slang term with an old meaning emerges on TikTok.Have you ever been told you have the gift of gab? Did your school report cards suggest you pipe down in class? Perhaps you’ve been called a chatterbox on an occasion or two?If you answered yes to one or more of those questions, you might be a yapper.Terms like yapper, yap and yapping have become popular on TikTok in recent weeks. To yap, in modern parlance, is simply to talk … a lot, often about something of little importance.“In the internet context, I would say somebody that’s a yapper is somebody that talks too much or is an over-sharer,” said Taylor-Nicole Limas, a 27-year-old influencer and self-proclaimed yapper in Chicago. “Somebody that just keeps on talking to fill the air. If it gets quiet, they just don’t stop talking.”Users might post a video of themselves yapping, talking at length about a given topic — perhaps something they feel moved to rant about or a subject in which they are an armchair expert. Or someone might be called a yapper in the comments of a video (whether the speaker intended to yap or not).Being labeled a yapper isn’t necessarily a compliment, but on a platform built on talk, it isn’t an insult either.Some creators have cheerfully embraced the moniker. Last summer, the TikTokers @bag_and_cj became known for videos in which they react to other TikTok videos with rambling commentary. The duo was named Yip and Yap by their fans. (An occasional third participant is known as Yop.)

@ladyaguilera2.0 I mean am I wrong??? #fyp #fypシ ♬ original sound – Ladyaguilera2.0 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 departure of President Vo Van Thuong, who occupied a largely ceremonial role, could have implications for the country’s future.Vietnam’s Communist Party has ruled the country for nearly half a century, often priding itself on unity and longevity. It is one of the world’s last remaining Communist dictatorships.It has also become one of Asia’s fastest growing economies and a pivotal player in the growing U.S.-China rivalry and has been adept at balancing its interests between the two powers. In recent years, many foreign companies and investors have flocked to Vietnam, which has touted its political stability in presenting itself as an alternative to China as a manufacturing hub.But the announcement Wednesday that President Vo Van Thuong had resigned, the second president to step down in a little over a year amid allegations of corruption, has undercut that message of stability even though the post is largely a ceremonial one. The resignation could spook investors.Here is what you need to know about Vietnam’s leadership:Who is the person in charge?Nguyen Phu Trong, third from left, the leader of the Communist Party in Vietnam, in Hanoi in January.Luong Thai Linh/EPA, via ShutterstockUnlike China, Vietnam, a country of 99.5 million people, does not have a paramount leader. Instead it is governed by “four pillars” of leadership: the general secretary of the Communist Party, the president, the chairperson of Parliament and the prime minister.Power largely resides with Nguyen Phu Trong, the Communist Party head, who is serving an unprecedented third five-year term as party chief.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