Elections

ABC’s telecast of the 96th Academy Awards on Sunday drew 19.5 million viewers, according to Nielsen.The comeback of live event TV continues.ABC’s telecast of the 96th Academy Awards on Sunday drew 19.5 million viewers, hitting a four-year viewership high, according to Nielsen. The live TV audience was up from last year’s 18.8 million, the third consecutive year that Oscar viewership has grown.The ratings report will prompt cheers at ABC and the academy, which bumped the start of the venerable awards ceremony to 7 p.m. Eastern, an hour earlier than usual, in the hopes that more viewers would stick around through the final categories.That approach appeared to pay dividends, as did the numerous nominations for the big box office hits “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” — a change from recent years when more obscure films dominated the ceremony. Jimmy Kimmel also received warm reviews in his fourth outing as host, leaving him one away from matching another late-night star who moonlighted at the Oscars, Johnny Carson.Nielsen said that Sunday’s Oscars were the most-watched network awards show since February 2020, extending a recent trend where viewer interest has perked up for the kind of mass cultural events that struggled during the pandemic.In February, 16.9 million people watched the Grammy Awards, a 34 percent increase from last year. Viewership of the Golden Globes in January rose 50 percent compared with a year ago. The Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers beat ratings records with an audience of 123.7 million. Even ratings for the 2023 Tony Awards, traditionally the least-viewed of the “EGOT” quartet, rose modestly.At Sunday’s Oscars, Billie Eilish sang her pop ballad “What Am I Made For?” and Ryan Gosling delivered a cheeky yet dedicated performance of “I’m Just Ken.” The choreography, which drew on Busby Berkeley films and the Marilyn Monroe musical “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” was complemented by a cameo by the thrash-rock guitarist Slash and a bevy of supporting Kens from “Barbie,” including Simu Liu.ABC, which has the broadcast rights to the Oscars through 2028, said that it had sold out its advertising inventory for Sunday’s event. The network did not share prices, but advertising executives said ABC had charged $1.7 million to $2.2 million for a 30-second spot, up slightly from last year. Some of the ads turned up in the broadcast itself, like a plug for Don Julio tequila, in which Guillermo Rodriguez, a Kimmel sidekick, offered the beverage to celebrities in the audience.In 2021, for a stripped-down pandemic Oscars held in a Los Angeles train station, only 10.4 million people tuned in. Viewership rose in 2022 to 16.6 million people, in part because of the bizarre spectacle of Will Smith slapping Chris Rock.Still, there is no question that TV viewing habits have changed. Before 2018, the Oscars telecast had never dropped below 32 million viewers. More

Days after allies took over the Republican National Committee, Donald J. Trump’s advisers are imposing mass layoffs on the party, with more than 60 officials, including senior staff members, laid off or asked to resign and then reapply for their jobs, according to two people familiar with the matter.The swift changes amount to a gutting of the party apparatus eight months before the November election, with one person familiar with the operations estimating that the R.N.C. had only about 200 people on payroll at the end of February, and about 120 at its headquarters near Capitol Hill. The heads of the communications, data and political departments were among those let go.On Friday, Michael Whatley, a close ally to Mr. Trump, and Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, were unanimously elected as the committee’s chair and co-chair. Mr. Trump had pushed out Ronna McDaniel, the committee’s leader since 2017, and endorsed Mr. Whatley and Ms. Trump to take the reins of the national party.Chris LaCivita, one of Mr. Trump’s top campaign advisers, was tapped to serve as the chief operating officer, and he was at the party headquarters meeting with senior staff on Monday.The purge of R.N.C. staff members was first reported by Politico. It is not clear that Mr. Trump is done clearing house.One person with direct knowledge of the changes said the party’s full finance and digital teams were now planned to be moved to Palm Beach, Fla., where the Trump campaign is based. Another person described the party and Trump operations as being functionally fused into one.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

US House Republicans on Monday released a report they said contradicted sensational January 6 committee testimony in which a former aide to Donald Trump described being told that as the attack on Congress unfolded, the then president was so eager to join supporters at the Capitol he tried to grab the wheel of his car.“The testimony of … four White House employees directly contradicts claims made by Cassidy Hutchinson and by the select committee in the final report,” read the report by the House administration subcommittee on oversight, which searched for alleged bias or malpractice in the January 6 investigation.“None of the White House employees corroborated Hutchinson’s sensational story about President Trump lunging for the steering wheel of the Beast,” the report said, referring to the colloquial name for cars that carry the president.“Some witnesses did describe the president’s mood after the speech at the Ellipse. It is highly improbable that the other White House employees would have heard about the president’s mood in the SUV following his speech at the Ellipse, but not heard the sensational story that Hutchinson claims Anthony Ornato, the White House deputy chief of staff for operations, told her after returning to the White House on January 6.”Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump and his final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, testified before the January 6 committee in private and in public.In public, her testimony about Trump’s anger at his inability to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden made her a star witness, compared by some to John Dean, the White House counsel whose testimony sealed Richard Nixon’s fate in the Watergate scandal.In especially memorable testimony, Hutchinson described what she said Ornato told her about Trump’s reaction, after telling supporters to “fight like hell”, to being told he could not go with them to the Capitol, to try to block election certification.According to Hutchinson, Ornato said Trump furiously lunged for the wheel before a secret service agent grabbed his arm and said: “Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel. We’re going back to the West Wing. We’re not going to the Capitol.”Hutchinson said she was told “Trump then used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engel [an agent] and when Mr Ornato recounted the story to me, he motioned towards his clavicles”.Questioned by Liz Cheney, an anti-Trump Republican and January 6 committee vice-chair, Hutchinson said Engel did not dispute the account. It was soon reported that Engel did dispute it, and wanted to testify under oath.Among transcripts released on Monday, the unnamed agent who drove Trump said: “The president was insistent on going to the Capitol. It was clear to me he wanted to go to the Capitol.”“He was not screaming at Mr Engel. He was not screaming at me. Certainly his voice was raised, but it did not seem to me that he was irate – [he] certainly … didn’t seem as irritated or agitated as he had on the way to the Ellipse,” the area near the White House where Trump addressed supporters.The driver added: “I did not see him reach. He never grabbed the steering wheel. I didn’t see him, you know, lunge to try to get into the front seat at all. You know, what stood out was the irritation in his voice, more than his physical presence.”The transcript was among those the January 6 committee did not release, citing security concerns. The transcripts were eventually released with redactions.On Monday, the New York Times said former January 6 committee aides said its final report included details of the driver’s interview and no cover-up was attempted.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe final report said: “The committee has now obtained evidence from several sources about a ‘furious interaction’ in the SUV. The vast majority of witnesses who have testified before the select committee about this topic, including multiple members of the secret service, a member of the Metropolitan police, and national security and military officials in the White House, described President Trump’s behavior as ‘irate’, ‘furious’, ‘insistent’, ‘profane’ and ‘heated’.”It also said: “It is difficult to fully reconcile the accounts of several of the witnesses who provided information with what we heard from Engel and Ornato. But the principal factual point here is clear and undisputed: President Trump specifically and repeatedly requested to be taken to the Capitol. He was insistent and angry, and continued to push to travel to the Capitol even after returning to the White House.”On Monday, Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, the Republican select committee chair, said the report showed “firsthand testimony directly contradicts Cassidy Hutchinson’s story and the [January 6] committee’s narrative. Although the committee had this critical information, they still promoted Ms Hutchinson’s third-hand version of events.”Now 27, Hutcinson has released a memoir and become a prominent figure on the anti-Trump right. On Monday, her attorney re-released a letter to Loudermilk first sent in January.“Since Ms Hutchinson changed counsel,” the letter said, referring to her decision to stop using lawyers provided by Trump, “she has and will continue to tell the truth.“While other individuals … would not speak with the select committee, Ms Hutchinson and many other witnesses courageously stepped forward. Yet she now finds herself being questioned by you and your subcommittee regarding her testimony and on matters that may also be the subject of ongoing criminal proceedings against Mr Trump.”Trump, 77, is the presumptive Republican nominee to face Biden again in the fall. He still faces 91 criminal charges, 17 concerning attempted election subversion. Though Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection, Senate Republicans assured his acquittal.Hutchinson, her lawyer said, would not “succumb to a pressure campaign from those who seek to silence her”. More

The U.S. secretary of state announced more aid for the multinational security mission planned to deploy to Haiti, as well as more humanitarian aid.Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken announced Monday that the United States would provide an additional $100 million in aid toward a United Nations-backed multinational security mission planned to deploy to Haiti, which has been overrun by gang violence.He also pledged an additional $33 million in humanitarian aid, bringing the U.S. commitments to $333 million.“We can help. We can help restore a foundation of security,” Mr. Blinken said during a meeting of regional leaders held in Kingston, Jamaica. “Only the Haitian people can, and only the Haitian people should determine their own future, not anyone else.”The pledge of further U.S. aid was the highlight of a meeting that seemed to achieve little progress in reaching a political resolution as unrest in Haiti’s capital has surged in the last two weeks.Prime Minister Ariel Henry of Haiti departed for Kenya in early March to finalize an agreement for the multinational force, led by the east African nation, to deploy and take on the gangs. Since then, Mr. Henry has been stranded outside his country while gang members wreak havoc and demand his resignation.So far, the prime minister has refused to step down even as pressure grows both in his country and abroad for him to resign. Mr. Henry, who has been staying in Puerto Rico, did not attend Monday’s meeting and it was unclear if he had taken part remotely in the discussion. 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

Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” notches its 19th week atop the all-genre Billboard 200 chart a year after its release.Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” was already a chart monster. The album, released last March, spent its first 12 weeks at No. 1, then notched another four by the fall, and two more early this year. Thanks to consistently huge streaming numbers, it was the most popular album of 2023.Now Wallen has another feather in his cap. “One Thing” has hit No. 1 for the 19th time, breaking Billboard’s record for most weeks at the top for a country album — surpassing Garth Brooks’s 1991 classic “Ropin’ the Wind,” which had era-defining country hits like “Shameless,” “What She’s Doing Now” and “The River.” (At least 11 non-country albums have logged more weeks at No. 1 in the 68-year history of Billboard’s all-genre chart, including Adele’s “21,” with 24 weeks, and the “West Side Story” soundtrack, with 54.)In its latest week, Wallen’s “One Thing” had the equivalent of 68,000 sales in the United States, including 90 million streams and 2,000 copies sold as a complete album, according to the tracking service Luminate.That is a modest take for a No. 1 album, but it was enough in an otherwise slow week. With Ariana Grande’s long-awaited new album “Eternal Sunshine” already posting big numbers, and sure hits by Beyoncé and Taylor Swift on the way in coming weeks, this might seem Wallen’s last shot at the top. But it also seemed that way last June, when he posted his 15th week at No. 1. Or in October, for his 16th.Also this week, Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season” climbs to No. 2, a new peak; released a year and a half ago, the folk-pop-y “Stick Season” — with banjo, mandolin and catchy hooks — went to No. 3 last summer and has been bubbling through the Top 10 for months.“Vultures 1,” by Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) and Ty Dolla Sign, holds at No. 3; fans continue to wait for the promised release of a second volume. SZA’s “SOS” is No. 4 and Drake’s “For All the Dogs” is No. 5. More

Donald Trump told CNBC that banning TikTok would make young people “go crazy” and could benefit Facebook, which he called an “enemy of the people.”Former President Donald J. Trump offered a rambling and confusing explanation on Monday of why he had reversed himself on whether the United States should ban TikTok over concerns that its Chinese ownership poses a threat to national security.In a CNBC interview, Mr. Trump said that he still considered the social media app a national security threat but that banning it would make young people “go crazy.” He added that any action harming TikTok would benefit Facebook, which he called an “enemy of the people.”“Frankly, there are a lot of people on TikTok that love it,” Mr. Trump said. “There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it.”“There’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad with TikTok,” he added, “but the thing I don’t like is that without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people, along with a lot of the media.”Mr. Trump tried to ban TikTok while in office, pushing its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the platform to a new owner or face being blocked from American app stores. A House committee advanced legislation last week that would similarly force TikTok to cut ties with ByteDance.In a powerful display of bipartisanship — rare these days in Washington — the top Republican and Democratic lawmakers on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party used nearly identical language to describe the risks of TikTok.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

Playing the professional Irishman, he returned from Limerick to New York, where he tended bar, appeared in soap operas, wrote a best seller, and, with his family, scattered “Angela’s Ashes.”Malachy McCourt, who fled a melancholic childhood in Ireland for America, where he applied his blarney and brogue to become something of a professional Irishman as a thespian, a barkeep and a best-selling memoirist, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 92.His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his wife, Diana McCourt.In 1952, when he was 20, the Brooklyn-born Mr. McCourt reunited with New York.He embarked from Ireland with a ticket paid for with $200 in savings sent by his older brother, Frank McCourt, who had emigrated earlier and was working as a public school English teacher. Frank would also become a late-blooming author, whose books included the Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiographical work “Angela’s Ashes” (1996).Malachy left school in Limerick when he was 13, two years after his heavy-drinking father deserted the family, leaving his mother, Angela, to raise the four of their surviving seven children. The family, Malachy would write, was “not poor, but poverty-stricken.”“Coming out of that life, the things that get you are the two evils of shame on one shoulder, the demon fear on the other,” he told The New York Times in 1998. “Shame says you came from nothing, you’re nobody, they’ll find you out for what you and your mother have done. Fear says what’s the use of bothering, drink as much as you can, dull the pain. As a result, shame takes care of the past, fear takes care of the future and there’s no living in the present.”In the mid-1980s, he gave up drinking and smoking.The barrel-chested, red-bearded Mr. McCourt appeared regularly on soap operas — notably “Ryan’s Hope,” on which he had a recurring role as a barkeep — and played bit parts in several films. In the 1950s, he opened what was considered Manhattan’s original singles bar: Malachy’s, on the Upper East Side.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

Under Donna Langley’s leadership, Universal has managed the rare feat of achieving creative dominance and commercial supremacy at the same time.“Queen!”It was a Friday night in January, and Snoop Dogg had just rolled into a cocktail party hosted by Donna Langley, NBCUniversal’s chief content officer and studios chairwoman. His shouted greeting, paired with a jaunty deferential dance, seemed to leave her a bit embarrassed. “We’re here to celebrate filmmakers and films,” Langley told the room a few minutes later. “This is not about me.”For an executive who ardently prefers to stay in the background — she declined to be interviewed for this article and dispatched a lieutenant to try and kill it — the 2024 Oscar trail has been an awkward one. Like it or not, this moment in Hollywood history is very much about her.It was Langley who, in a wild bet on a three-hour period drama about a physicist, gave Christopher Nolan the money to make “Oppenheimer.” It won seven Oscars on Sunday, including the ones for director and best picture. Nolan started his acceptance speech for best director by saying, “Donna Langley — thank you for seeing the potential in this.”Nolan’s film helped Universal be No. 1 at the worldwide box office in 2023, ending an eight-year reign by Disney.Antony Jones/Getty ImagesDa’Vine Joy Randolph won the supporting actress Oscar for her performance as a grieving mother and boarding school cook in “The Holdovers,” which was released by Focus Features, a specialty film studio that Langley also oversees.In a rare achievement, Universal’s creative dominance has coincided with commercial supremacy: The studio was No. 1 at the worldwide box office in 2023, selling nearly $5 billion in tickets and ending an eight-year reign by Disney. Moreover, Universal reached audiences the old-fashioned way — by serving up movies from a mix of genres, with nary a superhero to be found. “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” ($1.4 billion) led the way, followed by “Oppenheimer” ($958 million), “Fast X” ($705 million), “Five Nights at Freddy’s” ($291 million) and “Migration” ($279 million).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