Elections

President Biden criticized Israel’s response in the Gaza Strip as “over the top” on Thursday, while defending U.S. efforts to broker a cease-fire and increase the amount of humanitarian aid reaching the territory.In remarks that were overshadowed by questions over his memory and his mistakenly referring to the President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, instead as the president of Mexico, Mr. Biden appeared to describe Israel’s war in Gaza as disproportionate.“A lot of innocent people starving, in trouble, dying,” he said at a news conference at the White House, where he answered questions about his age and memory. “And it’s got to stop.”Israel has signaled this week that its military is gearing up to push into Rafah, a sliver at the southern end of Gaza where hundreds of thousands of civilians fleeing the violence have been crammed in. More than 27,000 people have been killed in Gaza four months of war, and most people are facing starvation and disease in addition to the continual airstrikes.The president has previously been critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza, saying in December that the country was engaged in “indiscriminate bombing” as the United States and other allies were pushing for more targeted approaches to limit civilian deaths. He said at the time that Israel’s conduct in the war was eroding international support for its position in the conflict.Those remarks, at a fund-raiser in Washington, also included assessments of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the leader of “the most conservative government in Israel’s history,” showing growing rifts between Israel and its strongest ally.That gulf over a way out of the war was on full display this week, when Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken traveled to the Middle East to push for a cease-fire deal.The Israeli prime minister pre-empted a joint news conference that would have been customary after his meeting with Mr. Blinken and instead met on his own with reporters to criticize the proposal the Americans saw as a potential opening to a solution. More

The special counsel, Robert K. Hur, concluded that the evidence was insufficient to charge President Biden with a crime, but sharply criticized him.Attorney General Merrick B. Garland on Thursday released the report by Robert K. Hur, the special counsel Mr. Garland had assigned to investigate how classified documents ended up in an office formerly used by President Biden and in his home in Delaware. Here are some takeaways.The evidence was insufficient to bring criminal charges.Mr. Hur was bound by a Justice Department policy that holds that the Constitution implicitly makes sitting presidents temporarily immune from prosecution, so he could not have charged Mr. Biden even if he wanted to. But Mr. Hur wrote that Mr. Biden should not be charged regardless.“We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter,” he wrote. “We would reach the same conclusion even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president.”Mr. Hur wrote that he had found evidence that Mr. Biden had willfully retained and disclosed sensitive information after he left the vice presidency in 2017. But he said the evidence fell short of what would be necessary to “establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”Hur said Biden had “significant” memory problems.Mr. Hur listed various reasons that a jury might reasonably doubt that Mr. Biden had “willfully” retained classified documents after leaving the Obama White House, including that Mr. Biden had reported the problem and invited investigators to search his home. But Mr. Hur cited another reason with potentially explosive political implications for the 81-year-old president as he seeks re-election: that he had memory problems.Mr. Hur wrote that Mr. Biden’s memory “appeared to have significant limitations.” The special counsel portrayed Mr. Biden’s recorded conversations with his ghostwriter in 2017 as “often painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events.” And, the report said, his recollection “was worse” in his interview with Mr. Hur in October, when Mr. Biden came off, he said, “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”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

Mr. Carlson’s interview with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia put him back on center stage for the first time since his Fox News show was canceled.Last spring, it seemed Tucker Carlson might have reached the end of his fiery path through American media and politics.Fox News canceled his top-rated show, depriving Mr. Carlson of his nightly platform in prime time. But it kept him under a contract, worth more than $15 million a year, that prohibited him from taking a job with a rival.Under the old rules of the legacy media, Mr. Carlson would have been off the air and out of sight through the end of the 2024 election, when his contract runs out. But Mr. Carlson is no typical television star. And what was once normal in his industry is increasingly archaic, shattered by the new rules — or lack thereof — of the fractured online media world.In landing an exclusive interview with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — released on Thursday on the social network X and Mr. Carlson’s own streaming site, Tucker Carlson Network — the host returned, at least for a moment, to the center of American politics.The two-hour interview gave him a bullhorn to an American audience just as many congressional Republicans worked to block a vital lifeline of American military aid to Ukraine.It also accomplished Mr. Carlson’s goal of recapturing the spotlight. For the first time since his defenestration from Fox, his name was once again on the lips of major national and international figures, the kind of buzz on which Mr. Carlson has long thrived.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

In a two-hour interview, President Vladimir Putin of Russia was more direct than usual about how he sees his Ukraine invasion ending: not with a military victory, but a deal with the West.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has worked for decades to win allies in the West, using his spy agencies to interfere in elections and deploying diplomats to build links with Kremlin-friendly politicians.On Thursday, the world witnessed a new, verbose chapter in those efforts: Mr. Putin’s two-hour interview, taped in a gilded hall at the Kremlin, with one of America’s most prominent and most divisive conservative commentators.Speaking to Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, Mr. Putin called on the United States to “make an agreement” to cede Ukrainian territory to Russia in order to end the war. He sought to appeal directly to American conservatives just as Republican lawmakers are holding up aid to Ukraine on Capitol Hill, echoing the talking points of politicians like former President Donald J. Trump who say that the United States has more pressing priorities than a war thousands of miles away.“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Mr. Putin said in response to Mr. Carlson’s question about the possibility of American soldiers fighting in Ukraine. “You have issues on the border, issues with migration, issues with the national debt.”He went on: “Wouldn’t it be better to negotiate with Russia?”Much of the interview constituted a familiar Kremlin history lesson about Russia’s historical claim to Eastern European lands, beginning in the ninth century, that Mr. Putin made little effort to distill for American ears. He opined on artificial intelligence, Genghis Khan and the Roman Empire. He also laid out his well-worn and spurious justifications for invading Ukraine, asserting that Russia’s goal was to “stop this war” that he claims the West is waging against Russia.But Mr. Putin was more direct than usual about how he sees his Ukraine invasion ending: not with a military victory, but through an agreement with the West. At the interview’s end, Mr. Putin told Mr. Carlson that the time had come for talks about ending the war because “those who are in power in the West have come to realize” that Russia will not be defeated on the battlefield.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

Five days before a special House election in New York, Tom Suozzi and Mazi Pilip traded blows in the race’s lone debate.The candidates vying to replace George Santos in a special House election squared off on Thursday in an exceedingly bitter debate, tangling over the roots of New York City’s migrant crisis, abortion rights and, at one point, the definition of “assault weapon.”The face-off on Long Island was the only chance for voters to see the candidates debate, and each sought to smear the other at close range. Mazi Pilip, the Republican nominee, claimed that her opponent, Tom Suozzi, “opened the border.” He called her wholly unprepared for Congress.The Feb. 13 election is considered a tossup. A victory by Mr. Suozzi would narrow Republicans’ paper-thin House majority at a time when they are already struggling to govern. If he loses, it could signal trouble for Democrats ahead of November’s elections.Here are five takeaways from the debate, hosted by News 12.The migrant crisis is dominating the race.New York is almost 2,000 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, but it is clear the race has become a referendum on the influx of migrants trying to get across it. The only question is who will take the blame in the eyes of frustrated voters.Ms. Pilip, a Nassau County legislator who immigrated from Israel, offered spare details about her own prescriptions to secure the border (she supports a wall and more border agents). But she repeatedly accused Mr. Suozzi, a moderate former three-term congressman, of siding with President Biden and far-left members of the House “squad” to encourage illegal immigration.“Tom Suozzi opened the border. Tom Suozzi funded the sanctuary city. Tom Suozzi kicked I.C.E. from Nassau County,” she said. Addressing Mr. Suozzi, she added, “This is absolutely you; you have to own it.”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

An unlikely dark comedy imagines the people pushing #PizzaGate, Donald Trump and who knows what next.No one misses the early days and dark theaters of the Covid pandemic, but the emergency workaround of streaming content was good for a few things anyway. People who formerly could not afford admission suddenly could, since much of it was free, and artists from anywhere could now be seen everywhere, with just a Wi-Fi connection.That’s how I first encountered “Russian Troll Farm,” a play by Sarah Gancher intended for the stage but that had its debut, in 2020, as an online co-production of three far-flung institutions: TheaterWorks Hartford, TheaterSquared in Fayetteville, Ark., and the Brooklyn-based Civilians. At the time, I found its subject and form beautifully realized and ideally matched — the subject being online interference in the 2016 presidential election by a Russian internet agency.“This is digitally native theater,” I wrote, “not just a play plopped into a Zoom box.”Now the box has been ripped open, and a fully staged live work coaxed out of it. But the production of “Russian Troll Farm” that opened on Thursday at the Vineyard Theater is an entirely different, and in some ways disappointing, experience. Though still informative and trenchant, and given a swifter staging by the director Darko Tresnjak, it has lost the thrill of the original’s accommodation to the extreme constraints of its time.Not that it is any less relevant in ours; fake news will surely be as prominent in the 2024 election cycle (is Taylor Swift a pro-Biden psy-op?) as it was in 2016. That’s when, as Gancher recounts using many real texts, posts and tweets of the time, trolls at the Internet Research Agency — a real place in St. Petersburg, Russia — devised sticky memes and other content meant to undermine confidence in the electoral process, sow general discord, legitimize Trumpism and vaporize Hillary Clinton.But the play is less interested in classics of the conspiracy genre like #PizzaGate and Frazzledrip than in the kinds of people who would dream them up. In the manner of sitcoms like “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “The Office,” “Russian Troll Farm” focuses on four such (fictional) trolls, neatly differentiated from one another and from their dragonish supervisor, Ljuba (Christine Lahti).King, left, and Lavelle as two of the trolls whose various schemes for advancement and connection end disastrously.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe 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 brand hosted a celebrity-fueled bash for its U.S. foray into high-end jewelry.On Wednesday night, a throng of actors, cycling through a swirl of events — awards season, New York Fashion Week and the Super Bowl — assembled in Midtown Manhattan, wearing Chanel, dressed by Chanel and for Chanel.Over cocktails, guests mingled for the opening of the brand’s first U.S. watch and fine jewelry flagship boutique on Fifth Avenue near 57th Street, designed by the architect Peter Marino with elements from Coco Chanel’s apartment in Paris.America Ferrera greeted Natasha Lyonne. Kerry Washington chatted with Elizabeth Olsen. Katie Holmes posed for photos with Michelle Williams. Zazie Beetz convened with Rachel Brosnahan. Dianna Agron lingered. And nearby, Carey Mulligan and Jerrod Carmichael talked.The new flagship store for fine jewelry and watches comes as New York’s retail space prices have kept rising over the past year. The move seemingly positions Chanel in a sector of the fashion industry that other brands, like Prada and LVMH, are also embracing.Chase Sui Wonders and Molly Gordon.Rachel Brosnahan and Zazie Beetz.Michelle Williams and Katie Holmes.Sadie SinkThe location on Fifth Avenue — sandwiched among Cartier, Tiffany & Company, Bulgari and Harry Winston — was a yearslong waiting game, according to Frédéric Grangié, the president of Chanel’s watches and fine jewelry.“It’s a big step for the house,” Mr. Grangié said.Steps away from the boutique, around 200 guests, including Lori Harvey, Francesca Scorsese and the actor Molly Gordon, shuffled into a dimly lit event space for dinner. In contrast to the store’s well-lit sparkle, the multilevel venue was enveloped in darkness that mimicked the shuttered Abercrombie & Fitch that was once there.Natasha LyonneCarey Mulligan and Jerrod Carmichael.Rose Byrne and Seth Meyers.Christopher AbbottPeople reflected on their favorite everyday accessories, like Ms. Lyonne’s grandmother’s gold chain. “I never saw her as a Tony Montana type. She was just a little Hungarian lady in a Pucci dress,” she said.The actor Taylour Paige, who loves her tennis bracelet and engagement ring, said that you can never have too many rings.“If anyone says you’re wearing too many rings, cut them out of your life,” she said.For the actors Tommy Dorfman and Amandla Stenberg, watches, which were family heirlooms passed down from generations, elicit a sense of nostalgia and sentimentality in an era of smart devices.White roses lined long tables where influential guests like Lauren Santo Domingo, the artistic director of Tiffany’s homewares; Larry Gagosian, the gallery magnate; and Sean MacPherson, the hotelier, enjoyed oysters, caviar-topped potatoes, lobster or wagyu, and a two-tiered assorted dessert tower. After one course, guests were offered vodka shots.Seth Meyers, the late-night host, did rounds greeting Ms. Ferrera and Ms. Olsen at one table, Ms. Beetz in another section with Ms. Holmes, and then later settling at his table with Ms. Washington and Ms. Williams.When it grew late, the crowd was invited to the basement for a surprise performance, and the singer Gracie Abrams took the stage to a backdrop lit like a starry sky.The singer Gracie Abrams. Larry GagosianKerry WashingtonPeter Marino and Cornelia Guest. More

The Russian president was noncommittal after Mr. Carlson asked about Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter who has been held in a Moscow prison for nearly a year.In an interview released on Thursday, Tucker Carlson urged President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to release an American reporter for The Wall Street Journal who has been held in a notorious Moscow prison for nearly a year.Mr. Carlson’s appeal on behalf of the reporter, Evan Gershkovich, was only the second time that Mr. Putin directly addressed a case that has galvanized press freedom groups and strained diplomatic relations with the United States.Large portions of the two-hour interview were taken up by Mr. Putin’s recounting hundreds of years of Russian history. But in the final minutes, Mr. Carlson asked, “as a sign of your decency,” if he “would be willing to release him to us and we’ll bring him back to the United States.” Mr. Carlson added: “This guy’s obviously not a spy. He’s a kid, and maybe he was breaking your law in some way, but he’s not a superspy, and everybody knows that.”Mr. Putin was noncommittal in his response. “We have done so many gestures of good will out of decency that I think we have run out of them,” he said, according to a translation of his remarks by Mr. Carlson’s team.Pressed about the case by Mr. Carlson, Mr. Putin later added: “I also want him to return to his homeland at last. I’m absolutely sincere. But let me say once again, the dialogue continues.”The Russian leader suggested that he wanted additional concessions from American officials before he would consider releasing Mr. Gershkovich. Mr. Putin suggested that he might be willing to trade the reporter for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian citizen sentenced to life in prison in Germany for the 2019 murder of a Chechen former separatist fighter in Berlin.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