Elections

Nikki Haley, the last candidate standing between former President Donald J. Trump and the Republican nomination, raised $24 million in the last three months of 2023 and entered this year with $14.6 million in her campaign account, a hefty sum that has all but ensured she will have the money to press on with her insurgent bid for the White House.The final fund-raising numbers of last year do not reveal how much Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, has raised since she came in a distant third place in the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15, then lost again in the New Hampshire primary election eight days later.But the filings with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday do indicate that her frugal presidential campaign has kept a lid on spending as it has pressed for new contributions.“We are running a smart campaign and that means spending our money wisely,” said Olivia Perez-Cubas, a spokeswoman for the Haley campaign. “Seventy percent of Americans don’t want a Biden-Trump rematch, and we have the resources and energy to make sure that doesn’t happen.”While Ms. Haley’s campaign handled money carefully, a super PAC backing her, SFA Fund Inc., spent heavily on advertising in 2023. The group reported raising $50.2 million in the second half of 2023, for a total of $68.9 million all year, but spent nearly all of it, ending the year with about $3.5 million on hand.This week, Ms. Haley, who was Mr. Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations, made her pitch to some of the wealthiest donors in the country, seeking their support as she continues a long-shot bid for the Republican nomination. And when the week is done, her aides say, she will sit down, as she has throughout her run, and personally review her campaign’s expenses.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?  More

Simeon Seigel takes us on a white-knuckle roller coaster ride.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTHURSDAY PUZZLE — Like Simeon Seigel, today’s constructor, I have never liked amusement park rides. Call me a buzzkill if you want, but I am terrified of heights and sudden drops, as well as rickety contraptions that look and feel as if the last time anyone did maintenance on them was 50 years ago.As always, your mileage may vary.What I do like is Mr. Seigel’s crossword. The people who dislike rebuses will be relieved to learn that there are none. What they may have difficulty with is figuring out how the circles in the grid function (and perhaps keeping their breakfasts down).Trust me, this one is very clever and well worth a try. Just keep an open mind about how theme entries are supposed to appear in a puzzle.Today’s ThemeGot a tight grip on the arms of your chair? Good, let’s get this ride started.The three theme clues are starred for visibility. Oh, and one thing to note if you haven’t seen this before: When a circle encloses four squares, as it does here, all four letters are included in the answer.Mr. Seigel’s theme is a series of LOOP DE LOOPS (61A) on a roller coaster, and the letters needed to complete its theme phrases follow those loops. Two loops are in each theme entry, one going clockwise and the other going counterclockwise.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?  More

Senator Kyrsten Sinema is behind schedule in making a decision about whether to seek re-election in Arizona. She’s also running out of time.Ms. Sinema, who left the Democratic Party just over a year ago to become an independent, is still considering whether to run for a second term, aides said. But new campaign finance reports show that she is lagging well behind the plan she and her team discussed last spring.In April, Ms. Sinema and her advisers laid out a schedule for her decision that set a deadline of Sept. 30 for an initial round of public opinion polling and research into challengers, who include Representative Ruben Gallego, a Democrat, and Kari Lake, a Republican television-anchor-turned-politician who narrowly lost the governor’s race in 2022. By the end of December, Ms. Sinema would have a campaign staff in place.But there is no sign that she carried out any significant polling, research or staff hires in the final six months of last year. She spent $6.9 million during the past year, new filings with the Federal Election Commission show, much of which went toward digital advertising, security and consulting.New concerns also emerged on the other side of her campaign’s ledger. Ms. Sinema collected just under $600,000 during the final three months of last year — the fourth quarter in a row in which she had raised less than in the previous three-month period.“There are no signs — literally or figuratively — that Kyrsten is going to run,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican strategist in Arizona.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?  More

US senator Tom Cotton repeatedly asked TikTok’s Singaporean chief Shou Zi Chew about his ties with China and if he had ever belonged to the Chinese Communist party during a hearing over alleged online harms to children. It was the first appearance by Chew before lawmakers in the US since March, when the Chinese-owned short video app company faced harsh questions, including some suggesting the app was damaging children’s mental health and that user data could be passed on to China’s government. More

A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit by Palestinian Americans who sought to force the White House to withdraw support for Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, as was widely expected based on constitutional precedent that only the political branches of U.S. government could determine foreign policy.But, unexpectedly, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White indicated that he would have preferred to have issued the injunction were he not limited by the Constitution, and he implored the Biden administration to “examine the results of their unflagging support” of Israel.The determination came five days after a hearing in Oakland, Calif., in which Judge White allowed the head of a humanitarian group, a medical intern and three Palestinian Americans with relatives in Gaza to tell the court that their loved ones were being slaughtered. They alleged that the U.S. government has underwritten a genocide by backing Israel’s military response to the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas.“President Biden could, with one phone call, put an end to this,” Laila el-Haddad, a Palestinian activist and author living in Maryland, told the judge. She said that Israeli attacks had killed at least 88 members of her extended family in Gaza. “My family is being killed on my dime.”Judge White, who last week had called the testimony “gut-wrenching,” wrote that the evidence and testimony “indicate that the ongoing military siege in Gaza is intended to eradicate a whole people.”But, he added, “there are rare cases in which the preferred outcome is inaccessible to the court.”This, he wrote, was such a case: “It is every individual’s obligation to confront the current siege in Gaza, but it is also this Court’s obligation to remain within the metes and bounds of its jurisdictional scope.”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?  More

Think I have something good to report, people. No, it’s not about how to get your kids Taylor Swift tickets in Tokyo.My news is that Dean Phillips is not going to run as a third-party candidate for president.“No! No!” he assured me when I asked him the big question this week.OK, you’re thinking that you’ve had more thrilling news from the grocer on banana prices. But follow along for a minute.Phillips is a representative from Minnesota who campaigned very energetically in the New Hampshire presidential primary. People there were a tad piqued by the Democrats’ decision to move the first official party vote to South Carolina. Despite all that rancor, Phillips, who, unlike President Biden, was on the ballot, got about 24,000 votes to Biden’s nearly 80,000 write-ins.But he’s marching on. “Look at the data,” he said. (I discovered during our phone interview that Phillips says “Look at the data” a lot.) “I’m from the business world. It’s time to come out with a new product.”If you want to run for president and it doesn’t look as if your party is going to nominate you, you have two real choices. You can do what Phillips is doing: keep competing in the primaries and hope voters will embrace your message. Or you can get yourself on the ballot in November as a third-party candidate.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?  More

The sentencing judge called Ralph Joseph Celentano III’s attack on the police officer amid the Capitol riot a “truly cowardly and despicable thing to do.”A Queens man who tackled a police officer and pushed him over a ledge during the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced this week to six and a half years in prison, court records show.The man, Ralph Joseph Celentano III, 56, of Broad Channel, was sentenced on Tuesday, according to court records. A jury convicted him last June on two felony counts — assaulting, resisting or impeding an officer, and interference with officers during a civil disorder — and several misdemeanor counts, court records show.In sentencing Mr. Celentano, the Justice Department said in a news release, Judge Timothy J. Kelly of Federal District Court in Washington called his actions during the riot “disgraceful” and his assault on the officer “a truly cowardly and despicable thing to do.”Mr. Celentano is among more than 1,265 people to be charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riot, according to the Justice Department. He and other supporters of former President Donald J. Trump stormed the Capitol in a bid to prevent the certification of Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election. A federal investigation into the day’s events is continuing.Mr. Trump, who is seeking the Republican nomination in this year’s presidential election, faces federal conspiracy and other charges arising from the riot. He has pleaded not guilty.A federal public defender representing Mr. Celentano did not immediately respond to a request for 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?  More

Madonna performed at Madison Square Garden on Monday night as part of her Celebration Tour, a lavish stage spectacle devoted to her catalog of hits as the Queen of Pop. During “Like a Prayer,” she sang from a spinning carousel filled with jumbo crucifixes and shirtless men. When she performed “Vogue,” she invited Kelly Ripa onto the stage to join her in judging the ballroom moves of her dancers with scorecards.“I don’t know when I’m going to be back here playing again, but I’m doing this show like it’s my last show,” Madonna, 65, told the crowd. “And I’m doing this show like it’s my first show.”Before the concert, the scene outside the arena resembled a fashion runway as Madonna fans arrived to serve up style tributes to her. Men emerged from the subway wearing black biker boots and leather jackets. Some women had drawn fake beauty spots onto their upper lips. At a subterranean pregame bar in Penn Station, while hits like “Holiday” and “Papa Don’t Preach” piped from a speaker, Sophy LeMay, a corporate accountant, wore fingerless lace gloves as she nursed a drink.Fans shared their opinions about the lawsuit filed by two concertgoers against Madonna, who has become known as an unpunctual stage performer, accusing her of false advertising and negligent misrepresentation for going on late at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in December. (Her representatives said that they “intend to defend this case vigorously.”)“It is what it is,” Julio Alvarez, who wore a bowler hat, said. “She’s Madonna.”“I’ve traveled all the way from Oklahoma to see her,” added Kevin Smith, who brandished a black riding crop. “I’ll stay awake until 1 a.m. to see her if I need to.”In the edited interviews below, fans reflected on Madonna’s enduring cultural relevance.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?  More