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    Tammy Murphy Wins Crucial Support in Her Bid for U.S. Senate

    The first lady of New Jersey won the endorsement of Democrats in Bergen County on Monday night, beating her closest primary rival, Representative Andy Kim.Tammy Murphy, the first lady of New Jersey, gained crucial support in her bid for the U.S. Senate on Monday night, winning the Democratic convention vote in Bergen County by a decisive margin.It was Ms. Murphy’s first victory at a convention decided by delegates using secret ballots, and it was considered a must-win matchup in her primary battle against Representative Andy Kim, a third-term South Jersey Democrat.The vote was 738 for Ms. Murphy, 419 for Mr. Kim.Over the past month, Mr. Kim, 41, won the first five county conventions in New Jersey that permitted delegates to select a nominee, including in Monmouth County, where Ms. Murphy and her husband, Gov. Philip D. Murphy, have lived for 25 years.With the support of Mr. Murphy, who has nearly two years left in his term, Ms. Murphy, 58, racked up early endorsements from a raft of influential Democratic officials even before hitting the campaign trail.But she has been battered by claims of nepotism and has struggled to gain support among rank-and-file Democrats as she makes her case that she should be their nominee to run for a coveted seat now held by Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat who has been charged with taking bribes. Mr. Menendez has not ruled out running for re-election, but he has been abandoned by most Democratic leaders and has almost no path to victory.Bergen County, in northern New Jersey, is the state’s most populous region. It has more Democrats than any county other than Essex, which includes Newark, the state’s largest city.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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    A Painter’s Role? Capturing the Sparkle of a Gemstone

    As one artist wrote: “Luxury is not found in the cold pixels of our phone or computer.”There are myriad words to describe how light enters and reflects in diamonds and gemstones. They glisten and sparkle, twinkle and dazzle. Often they are luminescent, sometimes brilliant and certainly eye-catching.But conveying those sentiments artistically, as in a drawing or painting, requires an entirely different kind of articulation. And as times have changed, so have the techniques used to capture jewelry, as well as the reasons for depicting it.“There is a code to always respect so that the eye can read the volume and the jewelers can understand the design,” Estelle Lagarde, 29, a gouache painter and jewelry designer in the Haute-Savoie region of eastern France, wrote in an email. “The light always comes from the top, at 45 degrees to the left. Thanks to this code, we know where to place the shadows and light.”Ms. Lagarde’s use of that code, which guides artisans turning designers’ ideas into reality, can be seen in her meticulously detailed images of jewelry and watches. She begins each project the same way: making a contour drawing using a software program, “in order to have the exact dimensions of the technical drawing and the contours of the piece.” She then prints the sketch on a sheet of gray paper and fills its curves and spaces using paint pigments and a long, thin hair brush, called a rigger brush, that allows her to paint fine lines and intricate details.She has created artworks for watch brands such as Vacheron Constantin, MB&F and Purnell and for jewelry companies including Messika and her own Lagarde Jewelry. And she always sells her jewelry with its matching painting, and also accepts painting commissions. Currently, a ring called Pop Candy (21,000 euros, or $22,630) is her entry level piece.The Pop Candy ring.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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    Jewelry Brands Say Showing a Client a Good Time Brings Sales

    Brands including Van Cleef & Arpels and David Morris acknowledge that showing a client a good time really produces results.For its first flagship store in Europe, the family-owned jewelry company Mouawad chose one of the nine Arcade boutiques at the Peninsula in London. The hotel opened in September, alongside Hyde Park Corner and Wellington Arch, and marketing makes clear that its target audience is the ultrarich.But Pascal Mouawad, a co-guardian of the Swiss house, acknowledged that its most significant sales would not occur in the new store.“Our big sales happen outside the boutiques,” Mr. Mouawad said as he sat beneath the store’s interior arches, a nod to the typical architecture of the family’s native Lebanon. “We do a lot of private events, trunk shows; we caravan the big pieces around the world.”Mouawad is not alone in its approach. Taking a leaf out of luxury fashion’s playbook, which in recent years has involved whisking V.V.I.P. clients to exotic locations around the world to see (and buy) their resort collections, jewelry parties and multiday trips have all but replaced the semiannual high jewelry presentations scheduled during Couture Week in Paris.In late December, for example, Van Cleef & Arpels invited a group of special clients to London to view some of its high jewelry pieces between private receptions and an evening at “The Nutcracker” at the Royal Opera House (the jeweler is a longtime sponsor of the theater).Anoona Jewels held a party for clients in London in November.via Anoona JewelsWe 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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    The Jewelry Designer Kia Schwaninger Steps Out With Her Own Collection

    Kia Schwaninger, who worked for other brands before starting her own, focuses on precision craftsmanship, style and a dash of emotion.When she was 5 years old Kia Schwaninger designed her first piece of jewelry, a refined necklace of royal-blue polymer clay beads that was for her mother.“I guess that was my first commission,” the Swiss-born designer who now lives and works in Brooklyn said as a joke. Her mother still has the necklace.Ms. Schwaninger started her own business, Jewels by Kia Schwan, in 2020.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesMs. Schwaninger, 42, has been serious about jewelry design ever since. After training in metalsmithing during her teen years, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in jewelry and metalsmithing from the Rhode Island School of Design, completed a design internship at Tiffany & Company and received a Master of Arts in Design and Applied Arts at the Creative Academy, a program in Milan founded by Richemont, the Swiss luxury group whose jewelry houses include Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels.It was Van Cleef’s president and chief executive, Nicolas Bos, who spotted her talent at the academy and later hired her as a junior designer. “She has an engineer’s mind-set and is very precise, but also has real creativity and a touch of whimsicality,” Mr. Bos said.She spent 10 years working for the French jeweler in Paris and then New York, where she rose to a senior designer post. “She created a legacy of her work in the Van Cleef collection,” he said, “some of which still remains today.”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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    The Jeweler Hemmerle Is Leaving its 120-Year-Old Boutique

    Hemmerle is leaving its historic boutique for a discreet suite down the street. “It’s more in line with who we are today,” Christian Hemmerle said.For 120 of its more than 130 years, the German jeweler Hemmerle welcomed clients in an elegant shop at Maximilianstrasse 14. On one of Munich’s prestigious royal avenues lined with high-end fashion and jewelry stores, the boutique was Hemmerle’s only physical site; its grand arched facade a symbol of the brand in the city.A necklace made with sapphires, rock crystal, labradorite, silver and white gold, and earringsmade with tourmalines, sapphires, garnets, bronze and white gold.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesEarrings made with emeralds, bronze and white gold, and a diamond ring made with bronze aluminum and gold.Laetitia Vancon for The New York TimesLast year, as it marked its 130th anniversary, Hemmerle gave up the lease and announced, on cards mailed to clients, that it was relocating. The new home would still be on Maximilianstrasse, but on an upper floor, accessible only by appointment.“The new space is a dream come true,” said Christian Hemmerle, who now owns the business with his wife, Yasmin. “When the landlord offered to buy out our lease, we jumped at the opportunity.”The business never had a great deal of foot traffic anyway, he said. “We have always been confidential, so this is more in line with who we are today.”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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    Nikki Haley gana las primarias de Washington y corta la racha de Trump

    La candidata obtuvo el 63 por ciento frente al 33 por ciento de Donald Trump, convirtiéndose en la primera mujer en ganar unas primarias presidenciales republicanas.El domingo, Nikki Haley ganó las primarias republicanas en Washington, D. C., registrando su primera victoria tras una serie de derrotas ante el expresidente Donald Trump, quien respondió amargamente en las redes sociales, diciendo que había evitado a propósito la contienda “porque es el ‘pantano’”.Haley obtuvo alrededor del 63 por ciento de los votos frente al 33 por ciento de Trump, según The Associated Press, asegurándose los 19 delegados disponibles y convirtiéndose en la primera mujer que gana unas primarias presidenciales republicanas. Sin embargo, Trump sigue bien posicionado para asegurarse la nominación este mes.La contienda en Washington fue pequeña: poco más de 2000 republicanos votaron en la ciudad abrumadoramente demócrata, un gran contraste en comparación con los 110.000 en Iowa, 325.000 en Nuevo Hampshire y 757.000 en Carolina del Sur.Haley pareció reconocer esto en una publicación en la red social X. “¡Gracias, D. C.!”, escribió. “Luchamos por cada centímetro”.Pero Trump no podía dejar pasar ese centímetro. En su sitio de redes sociales, afirmó falsamente que Haley había “gastado todo su tiempo, dinero y esfuerzo allí”. Nunca utilizó su nombre, y se refirió a ella repetidamente con su despectivo apodo de “cabeza de chorlito”.Haley trató de jugar con el simbolismo de Washington —que no es precisamente el lugar favorito de los republicanos— a su favor, escribiendo: “Los republicanos más cercanos a la disfunción de Washington saben que Donald Trump no ha traído más que caos y división en los últimos ocho años”.Karoline Leavitt, portavoz de Trump, dijo en un comunicado que Haley “acaba de ser coronada ‘reina del pantano’ por los grupos de presión y los expertos de D. C. que buscan proteger el fracasado statu quo”.La contienda se centrará ahora en los 15 estados que celebrarán elecciones republicanas el Supermartes, el 5 de marzo. Aunque no es matemáticamente posible que Trump consiga la nominación todavía, podría acercarse mucho con una buena actuación en el Supermartes y posicionarse para lograrlo en las próximas dos semanas.Maggie Astor cubre política para The New York Times, enfocándose en noticias de última hora, legislaciones, campañas y cómo los grupos subrepresentados o marginados se ven afectados por los sistemas políticos. Más de Maggie Astor More

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    Trump Colorado Ballot Case

    Cite as: 601 U. S.

    Per Curiam

    (2024)

    5

    a wide array of offices-rather than by granting rights to all. It is therefore necessary, as Chief Justice Chase concluded and the Colorado Supreme Court itself recognized, to “ascertain[] what particular individuals are embraced”” by the provision. App. to Pet. for Cert. 53a (quoting Griffin’s Case, 11 F. Cas. 7, 26 (No. 5,815) (CC Va. 1869) (Chase, Circuit Justice)). Chase went on to explain that “[t]o accomplish this ascertainment and ensure effective results, proceedings, evidence, decisions, and enforcements of decisions, more or less formal, are indispensable.” Id., at 26. For its part, the Colorado Supreme Court also concluded that there must be some kind of “determination” that Section 3 applies to a particular person “before the disqualification holds meaning.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 53a.

    The Constitution empowers Congress to prescribe how those determinations should be made. The relevant provision is Section 5, which enables Congress, subject of course to judicial review, to pass “appropriate legislation” to “enforce” the Fourteenth Amendment. See City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U. S. 507, 536 (1997). Or as Senator Howard put it at the time the Amendment was framed, Section 5 “casts upon Congress the responsibility of seeing to it, for the future, that all the sections of the amendment are carried out in good faith.” Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., at 2768.

    Congress’s Section 5 power is critical when it comes to Section 3. Indeed, during a debate on enforcement legislation less than a year after ratification, Sen. Trumbull noted that “notwithstanding [Section 3] … hundreds of men [were] holding office” in violation of its terms. Cong. Globe, 41st Cong., 1st Sess., at 626. The Constitution, Trumbull noted, “provide[d] no means for enforcing” the disqualification, necessitating a “bill to give effect to the fundamental law embraced in the Constitution.” Ibid. The enforcement mechanism Trumbull championed was later enacted as part of the Enforcement Act of 1870, “pursuant to the power More

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    RuPaul Is Sending a Rainbow Bus to Give Away Books Targeted by Bans

    The star, whose show “RuPaul’s Drag Race” has an international following, is one of the founders of a new online bookstore promoting underrepresented authors. The giveaways are part of its outreach.At a time of book bans and efforts by state legislatures to ban drag shows, the performer and television producer who is arguably the country’s most famous drag star, RuPaul, is the co-founder of a new online bookstore that will be sending a rainbow school bus from the West Coast to the South to distribute the very books targeted by those bans.He announced on Monday that he was one of three business partners behind the bookstore, Allstora, which will promote underrepresented authors and provide writers with a greater share of profits than other online booksellers do.RuPaul said that this sort of book website would fill an important gap, especially in “these strange days, we’re living in,” to support the ideas of people “who are willing to push the conversation forward.”In recent years, there has been a sharp rise in efforts to restrict access to books at libraries in the United States, and most of the challenged books are by or about L.G.B.T.Q. people or people of color, according to library and free speech organizations. Some libraries have received bomb threats, and others have faced closure over efforts to remove books. At the same time, states have tried to ban drag shows and restrict access to health care for transgender people.RuPaul with Eric Cervini, left, co-founder and chief executive of Allstora, and Adam Powell, co-founder and director of the Rainbow Book Bus.AllstoraEnter RuPaul. Drag has been in popular culture for decades, but his reality competition show “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” which is airing its sixteenth season and has more than a dozen international editions, has brought the work of hundreds, if not thousands, of drag performers to home audiences.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