Elections

It has become clear that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is not the leader for this critical moment.The devastation of Gaza is at intolerable levels and getting worse; the Israeli government is under intense pressure from the families of hostages to do far more to free them before they perish; the United States and Arab states, anxious to avoid a regional war, are trying to mediate an end to the conflict. But Mr. Netanyahu blocks the way.As a majority of Israelis and their allies can see, Mr. Netanyahu and his insistence on “total victory” over Hamas, with no consideration of the consequences or costs, have become a part of the problem. He is playing a cynical game, using the war to serve his political ends, and Israelis, most of whom support the effort to wipe out Hamas, are getting tired of it.He has even managed to alienate Israel’s most important ally. Despite President Biden’s display of total support for Israel — and Mr. Netanyahu — after the atrocious attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, including the president’s personal visit to the Jewish state, Mr. Netanyahu has deliberately and publicly defied American advice as contrary to Israel’s “vital interests.” A particularly contentious conversation in late December ended with Mr. Biden angrily declaring, “This conversation is over.” It was a month before Mr. Biden phoned again.The problem is not necessarily Mr. Netanyahu’s hawkish stance, which is shared by many Israelis enraged by the barbaric Hamas raid. It is Mr. Netanyahu’s confusion of leadership with political survival, with the widespread perception that he opposes any negotiated settlement, and any American advice or mediation, not because he really believes they run counter to Israelis’ interests, as he claims, but because appearing to stand up to “American pressure,” and portraying the Gaza war as a far broader conflict about a Palestinian state and Iran, serves his political ends.That, at least, appears to be what a majority of Israelis believe, even those who might otherwise align with the prime minister’s insistence on trying to fully eradicate Hamas. According to a political poll taken in late December, only 15 percent of Israelis wanted him to stay in office after the war ended.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

If you can imagine the lobby bar of the Manchester Marriott as an Anglo-Saxon mead hall, I can explain how it felt to cover the New Hampshire primary.I will need the help of the late Seamus Heaney, who described what it was like to be quaffing in Heorot Hall while Grendel lurked and swooped through the frost-stiffened north.In his lyrical translation of “Beowulf,” Heaney described Grendel as “the terror-monger,” the “captain of evil” and “the dread of the land.”He wrote that the fiend “ruled in defiance of right” and was “malignant by nature, he never showed remorse.”The “powerful demon, a prowler through the dark, nursed a hard grievance,” he said, adding: “Grendel waged his lonely war, inflicting constant cruelties on the people, atrocious hurt,” pursuing “vicious raids and ravages.”The New Hampshire primary felt like a chapter of that Old English saga: Donald Trump, the ogre who keeps coming back to terrorize us, was stomping around that lovely little snow-covered state, devouring his foes.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

Nikki Haley lost the New Hampshire primary but found a cause: getting under Donald Trump’s not exactly rhinoceros-thick skin. The story of the Republican primary campaign in the days since Trump’s victory has been one where the victor acts like a sore loser and the likely loser loosens up, goads her stronger rival and finds a pool of small-dollar donors to keep her in the race.Haley’s turn toward mockery and confrontation has created modest excitement in the disillusioned world of NeverTrump punditry. Maybe the remaining non-Trump Republican is giving up on being vice president or winning some future G.O.P. primary campaign. Maybe she’s ready to make Trump’s unfitness her exclusive theme. Maybe, as The Dispatch’s Nick Catoggio speculates, by needling and attacking and bringing out Trump’s worst behavior, she can even bring about the long-awaited Republican crackup that would finally defeat Trump on the scale that he deserves.I don’t think this hope makes a lot of sense. The idea that there exists some form of elite Republican denunciation, combined with egregious Trumpian misbehavior, that could shatter the G.O.P. coalition and send him to a Barry Goldwater or George McGovern-style defeat, seemed plausible enough eight years ago. It’s what I expected and what Republicans deserved.But I should have heeded the wisdom of Bill Munny in Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven”: “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” Because since then we’ve seen all kinds of terrible behavior, coupled with attempted repudiations from all sorts of Republicans, including Trump’s own aides and cabinet appointees. And yet the rule has held: Ask people if they like Trump and majorities do not, but put Trump up against the current Democratic Party, and he becomes a viable candidate for president.Maybe Haley is the right figure to change that. But she has nowhere near the pre-Trump fame of a Mitt Romney or the ideological credibility of a Liz Cheney. And based on what we saw from Chris Christie’s campaign, a pure repudiate-Trump candidacy is only likely to enhance Trump’s margins in the remaining primaries, emphasizing Haley’s hopelessness rather than her gumption.Moreover, wouldn’t there be something a little bit strange, after two consecutive primary campaigns in which Republicans desperately competed for a chance to face off with Trump one-on-one, for the winner of that prize to immediately give up on winning any more supporters? Haley’s consolidation of gentry Republicans succeeded in boxing out Ron DeSantis’s attempt to build a larger non-Trump coalition. Is she really not even going to attempt to build a larger coalition of her own?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

Should terminally ill people be able to choose how they die? Six years after being diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer, Julie Petrow-Cohen decided to use medical aid in dying — or MAID, as it is often called — to end her life. But for many Americans in similar circumstances, this is not an option. In this audio essay, the writer Steven Petrow shares the story of his sister’s last day and why MAID should be a right for everyone.Read Steven’s guest essay on Julie’s decision here.(A full transcript of this audio essay will be available by Monday.)Illustration by Akshita Chandra/The New York Times; Photograph by Steven PetrowThe Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, X (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram.This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Derek Arthur. It was edited by Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Sonia Herrero. Original music by Isaac Jones, Carole Sabouraud and Pat McCusker. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Joanna Pearlstein, Hans Buetow and the “Modern Love” podcast team. More

On This Week’s Episode:In Gaza and beyond, what it means to have words — and to lose them.via Youmna ElSayedThe New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling and provides news, depth and serendipity. It is available to Times news subscribers on iOS. If you haven’t already, download the app and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Our new audio app is home to “This American Life,” the award-winning program hosted by Ira Glass. New episodes debut in our app a day earlier than in the regular podcast feed, and we also have an archive of the show. The app includes a “Best of ‘This American Life’” section with some of our favorite bite-size clips, so you can enjoy the show even if you don’t have a lot of time. More

Grace and Greg Warrington make their New York Times debut.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesSATURDAY PUZZLE — Well, hello there. Are you surprised to see me hanging around Wordplay so late in the week? As regular readers of the column may have already surmised, Caitlin Lovinger indulged me in a little column swap: You got her “Take” (52A) — that is, ANGLE — on Monday and Tuesday’s crosswords, so I’m writing about the weekend puzzles. Think of it as an exchange program.The view from this side of the week is lovely. Today’s themeless grid was constructed by Greg and Grace Warrington, a father and daughter duo — cue the “Aww!” from our imaginary studio audience — who are making their New York Times debut. The generational span between constructors may explain why this puzzle feels so charmingly versatile in its subject matter; it really has something for everyone. Its pacing also varied notably from quadrant to quadrant. The northwest corner came naturally, while the southeast nearly took me out. Your mileage may vary with your knowledge base, as always. Shall we take it for a spin?Tricky Clues33A. Out of context, a “double albatross” sounds like a cursed creature that escaped extinction during the last ice age. To those with some sports slang in their arsenal, however, this reads as a golf reference. The answer is PAR FIVE — a “Possible (but extremely unlikely) setting” for this whimsically named hole-in-one shot (also known as a condor).49A. Mensa seems a fitting guess for this “Pioneer in I.Q. testing,” if only because it’s the organization that jumps to mind whenever I.Q. tests are mentioned. But the origins of intelligence quotient testing are back a little further: Alfred BINET, a French psychologist, developed the test questions at the turn of the 20th century. (Mensa was founded in 1946.)50A. It’s been a while since the New York Times Crossword caught a glimpse of Josep Maria SERT, the “Muralist who was a colleague of Dalí.” The painter’s last appearance in a puzzle was on Sept. 6, 2020.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 longtime chairman of World Wrestling Entertainment stepped down one day after a former employee accused him of sexual assault in a federal lawsuit.Vince McMahon, the longtime chairman and former chief executive officer of World Wrestling Entertainment, resigned from his positions with W.W.E. and its parent company, the TKO Group, on Friday, one day after a former employee accused him of sexual assault and trafficking in a federal lawsuit.W.W.E. employees were informed of the changes in an email sent by Nick Kahn, the president of W.W.E. “He will no longer have a role with TKO Group Holdings or W.W.E.,” Mr. Kahn wrote in the email, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.Vince McMahon at W.W.E. headquarters in Stamford, Conn., in 2018.Jesse Dittmar for The New York TimesThe lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Connecticut, accused Mr. McMahon of trafficking the employee, Janel Grant, as well as physically and emotionally abusing her. The graphic complaint, which also named John Laurinatis, a W.W.E. executive, and the company itself as defendants, says Mr. McMahon and Mr. Laurinatis once took turns raping her, among numerous other allegations.Mr. McMahon eventually pressured Ms. Grant to sign a nondisclosure agreement in exchange for $3 million, according to the complaint, but paid her only $1 million.In a statement released after his resignations, Mr. McMahon called Ms. Grant’s lawsuit a “vindictive distortion of the truth” and said he looked forward to clearing his name. But he decided to resign “out of respect” for TKO, W.W.E., their employees and wrestlers.The lawsuit is far from the first time Mr. McMahon has been accused of sexual misconduct. In 2022, a special committee of W.W.E.’s board conducted an investigation into Mr. McMahon’s conduct, and found that over 16 years he had spent $14.6 million in payments to women who had accused him of sexual misconduct. A further company investigation found he had made an additional $5 million in payments to two different women.Mr. McMahon temporarily resigned from W.W.E. during the investigation. But he remained the company’s largest shareholder, and in 2023 he returned to chair its board and initiate a sale process that resulted in sports and entertainment conglomerate Endeavor purchasing it. Endeavor then combined W.W.E. and another one of its holdings, the mixed martial arts promotional company Ultimate Fighting Championships, into a new public company, TKO Group.This is a breaking story. It will be updated. More

The owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, had raised concerns with Kevin Merida, who stepped down this month, over reporting about a wealthy doctor and his dog.When Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of The Los Angeles Times, hired Kevin Merida to be the newspaper’s top editor nearly three years ago, he hailed the journalist as someone who would maintain the publication’s high standards and journalistic integrity.By this winter, the professional warmth between the two men had chilled. Their relationship was strained in part by an incident in December when Dr. Soon-Shiong tried to dissuade Mr. Merida from pursuing a story about a wealthy California doctor and his dog, three people with knowledge of the interactions said. The doctor was an acquaintance of Dr. Soon-Shiong, the people said.The previously unreported incident occurred as The Los Angeles Times, the largest news organization on the West Coast, struggled to reverse years of losses amid a difficult market for newspapers. Mr. Merida resigned this month. Shortly afterward, the company laid off roughly 115 journalists, or about 20 percent of its newsroom.It is not unheard-of for the owner of a publication to be consulted on sensitive reporting, particularly if it could jeopardize the newspaper legally or financially. But it is unusual for an owner or a publisher to pressure editors to stop reporting on a story well before publication, especially in cases that do not put government secrets or human lives at risk.In a statement on Friday, Dr. Soon-Shiong disputed the characterization of how he had acted, calling it “factually incorrect.” The Los Angeles Times said in a statement that Dr. Soon-Shiong, who bought the newspaper in 2018, had made a request for “truthful, factual reporting” on the story.In a note to staff this month, Mr. Merida said he had decided to step down after “considerable soul-searching about my career at this stage.” Dr. Soon-Shiong said at the time that it had been “mutually agreed” that Mr. Merida would leave.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