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      Swept Out of Office by Covid, a Democratic Governor Eyes a Comeback

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      Steve Sisolak, the former governor of Nevada, says he is weighing a rematch against Gov. Joe Lombardo, the Republican who ousted him in 2022.Many Democrats performed better than expected in the 2022 midterm elections, bucking historical trends to hold on to key governor’s offices and House seats and to expand their majority in the Senate.One notable exception was Gov. Steve Sisolak of Nevada, who was weighed down by a backlash to the lockdowns he had ordered during the coronavirus pandemic and by the economic downturn that followed. Even as Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, squeaked out a re-election victory in Nevada, Mr. Sisolak became the only Democratic governor to lose that year, giving way to Joe Lombardo, a Republican.Now, as Democrats search for a direction after their November defeat and contemplate the best ways to oppose President Trump and his allies, Mr. Sisolak is considering a rematch against Mr. Lombardo. A former Clark County sheriff, Mr. Lombardo has stood as a Republican bulwark against the Democratic-controlled Nevada Legislature. He is up for re-election next year.Mr. Lombardo occupies a somewhat rare position in today’s Republican Party. Though he speaks favorably of the president, he distanced himself last year from the state party and its focus on debunked election conspiracy theories, and he was not an especially vocal presence on the campaign trail for Mr. Trump.In two phone calls this week, Mr. Sisolak, 71, spoke about a possible comeback attempt, the state of the Democratic Party and how the economic turmoil caused by Mr. Trump’s tariffs could affect Nevadans.Here is the conversation, condensed and edited.What have you been seeing in Nevada since you’ve been out of office, and how do you think Governor Lombardo has been doing?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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      Tesla U.S. Sales Plunge as G.M. and Others Make Gains

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      Tesla’s sales in the United States fell almost 9 percent in the first three months of the year even as the overall market for electric vehicles grew, according to data compiled by a research firm.Car buyers are moving away from Teslas and toward models like General Motors’ Chevrolet Equinox electric vehicle, which starts at around $35,000 and can travel more than 300 miles on a charge, Cox Automotive, the research firm, said in a report.Sales of all electric vehicles in the United States rose 11 percent during the first quarter to about 300,000 cars and light trucks, Cox said, much faster than the overall auto market, which has been flat. About 8 percent of new domestic car sales were electric, Cox said, a slight increase from 2024.“Despite many obstacles — and what you may read elsewhere — electric vehicle sales continue to grow at a healthy pace in the U.S. market,” the firm said.Tesla, whose chief executive is Elon Musk, still sells far more electric cars in the United States than any other automaker, accounting for 44 percent of the market, according to Cox. But its share has fallen from 51 percent a year earlier.The decline in Tesla’s U.S. sales mirror a global slump. The company said this month that deliveries during the quarter in all markets fell 13 percent to 337,000 vehicles.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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      How Tariffs Could Cause Car Insurance Costs to Rise

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      New tariffs are expected to push up prices of vehicles and car parts, and that could raise premiums as much as 16 percent. Here are some tips on how to try to keep costs down.Add this to worries about the likely impact of tariffs: costlier car insurance.The new tariffs on imported cars, metals and parts announced by the Trump administration are expected to raise vehicle prices by thousands of dollars if they remain in place. And because parts used in auto repairs will also become more expensive, the average cost of automobile insurance is expected to increase.The average annual premium for a full-coverage auto policy was just over $2,300 at the end of last year, according to an analysis by Insurify, an insurance comparison shopping website. The site initially estimated that premiums would increase just 5 percent this year, based on factors like inflation and insurer losses.How much of an impact could tariffs have on car insurance costs?With the addition of the tariffs, Insurify now projects premiums to rise at least 16 percent, or $378, to almost $2,700 on average nationally — about $256 more than without tariffs. The analysis includes the tariffs on steel and aluminum, those on imported cars and those on imported auto parts scheduled to take effect May 3. (Tariffs announced in February on products from Mexico and Canada were adjusted to exempt some goods, including cars and auto parts, that comply with the free trade agreement President Trump negotiated in his first term, according to Insurify. If that exemption is lifted, the increase in automobile premiums could be as high as 19 percent, the analysis found.)An Insurify spokeswoman said the Trump administration’s announcement on Wednesday, pausing double-digit global tariffs for 90 days, didn’t change the company’s projections. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in response to a reporter’s question after the announcement, indicated that the pause didn’t apply to certain tariffs like those on automobiles.“Things that increase the cost of repairs impact prices,” said Robert Passmore, vice president of personal lines with the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, whose members are big insurance companies. About 60 percent of parts used in auto shop repairs are imported from Mexico, Canada and China, the association has said.The price of car insurance has soared in recent years for a variety of reasons, including more claims resulting from driving habits that deteriorated during the pandemic, the use of more expensive technology in cars, and damage from strong storms and hail. While increases had recently begun to moderate, the cost of motor vehicle insurance still rose 7.5 percent in March compared with a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.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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      As Trump Upends Global Trade, Europe Sees an Opportunity

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      President Trump has big ambitions for the global trading system and is using tariffs to try to rip it down and rebuild it. But the European Union is taking action after action to make sure the continent is at the center of whatever world comes next.As one of the globe’s biggest and most open economies, the E.U. has a lot on the line as the rules of trade undergo a once-in-a-generation upheaval. Its companies benefit from sending their cars, pharmaceuticals and machinery overseas. Its consumers benefit from American search engines and foreign fuels.Those high stakes aren’t lost on Europe.Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the E.U.’s executive arm, has spent the past several weeks on calls and in meetings with global leaders. She and her colleagues are wheeling and dealing to deepen existing trade agreements and strike new ones. They are discussing how they can reduce barriers between individual European countries.And they are talking tough on China, trying to make sure that it does not dump cheap metals and chemicals onto the European market as it loses access to American customers because of high Trump tariffs.It’s an explicit strategy, meant to leave the economic superpower stronger and less dependent on an increasingly fickle America. As Ms. von der Leyen and her colleagues regularly point out, the U.S. consumer market is big — but not the be-all-end-all.“The U.S. makes up 13 percent of global goods trade,” Maros Sefcovic, the E.U.’s trade commissioner, said in a recent speech. The goal “is to protect the remaining 87 percent and make sure that the global trade system prevails for the rest of us.”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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      Charter Company in Fatal Helicopter Crash Had Prior Mechanical Failures

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      The firm that operated the helicopter that crashed in the Hudson River on Thursday, killing all six people aboard, has a long history of flying excursions around New York City, some of which have encountered safety problems.In 2013, one of the helicopters operated by the company, New York Helicopter Charter, was carrying a family of four on a sightseeing tour when it suddenly lost power. It was forced to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River near the Upper West Side of Manhattan.About two years later, another of its helicopters crashed while hovering 20 feet off the ground after taking off in northern New Jersey.In that episode, the pilot reported that the helicopter had started to spin out of control before he put it down for a “hard landing.” An investigation found that the aircraft had previously been involved in a hard landing in Chile in 2010 and that a drive shaft that was “unairworthy” was installed on the aircraft, according to a report by the National Transportation Safety Board.The investigation found that the faulty drive shaft had been painted by a previous owner, making it impossible to tell whether it had been part of the helicopter during the earlier hard landing.The investigators found that the probable cause of the crash was “deliberate concealment and reuse” of the faulty component “by unknown personnel.”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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      What Is the Bell 206L Helicopter?

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      The sightseeing helicopter that crashed into the Hudson River on Thursday, killing six people, was a Bell 206L LongRanger, a common single-engine aircraft long used for law enforcement missions, medical lifts, newsgathering and aerial tourism.The 206L has been in use for decades; its maker, Bell Textron, an aviation company based in Texas, took it out of production less than 10 years ago. With upkeep, the model is seen as safe and reliable, according to Greg Feith, a former National Transportation Safety Board investigator who has flown one. “It’s a tried and true aircraft,” Mr. Feith said, adding, “As long as the maintenance has been done, and done properly, it’s going to be a reliable aircraft.” The helicopter is versatile and light, can carry up to six occupants, and flies at maximum speeds of about 115 miles per hour, Mr. Feith said.Over the last 25 years, Bell 206 helicopters — a family of similar models that includes the Bell 206L — have been involved in 82 fatal accidents in the United States, according to National Transportation Safety Board records. A spokeswoman for Bell, Lindsey Hughes, said in a statement, “Bell is following this tragedy as it develops, but we must direct any questions to the NTSB.” The 206L has been particularly popular with helicopter sightseeing tour companies, according to Shawn Pruchnicki, a former airline pilot and an assistant professor at the Center for Aviation Studies at Ohio State University.Mr. Pruchnicki said that he had greater concerns about the safety record of aerial sightseeing companies than the model of helicopter. “The helicopter tours do have a problematic record,” he said, “and they have had for a long time.” Mr. Feith, the former N.T.S.B investigator, said he would want to know the number of flights the aircraft had flown on Thursday and whether it had recent maintenance work done. “You want to see if there was evidence of fatigue, overstress” on the helicopter, Mr. Feith said. “There are a lot of elements to be explored.”Santul Nerkar More

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      Review: In a Musical Comedy Makeover, ‘Smash’ Lives Up to Its Name

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      En route to Broadway, the TV series about backstage shenanigans and Marilyn Monroe has been rejiggered, with the same great songs but a whole new plot.Great musical comedies are great mysteries, and not just because they’re so rare. They’re also mysteries in the way they operate. To succeed, they must keep far ahead of the audience, like thrillers with twists you can’t see coming. They are whodunits with songs instead of murders.“Smash,” which opened on Thursday at the Imperial Theater, is more of a who’ll-do-it, and when the big song comes, it’s a killer. But the effect is the same: It’s the great musical comedy no one saw coming.Or at least I didn’t. In 2012, I enjoyed the first season of the NBC television series, also called “Smash,” on which the musical is based. Its pilot, setting up a competition between two aspiring modern-day actresses to play Marilyn Monroe in a Broadway-bound musical, was terrific fun. But as the weeks wore on, the story becoming soapier and gloppier, the fizz fizzled out. Only the songs, by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, and the dances, by Joshua Bergasse, sparked highs.So I wasn’t sure what to make of the announcement that the material was being retooled for Broadway as a comedy instead of a melodrama. A video of “Let Me Be Your Star,” the thrillingly emotional duet that was the high point of the pilot, left me baffled. Rearranged as a solo at the start of the new show, it sounded all wrong: too cool, too light, with a Las Vegas leer. Was the creative team, led by the director Susan Stroman, planning to fix the property by trashing the few things the series got right?That turned out to be a brilliant feint.The Broadway “Smash” being the kind of mystery I mentioned, I’ll try to be careful about spoilers. But there’s so much to enjoy at the Imperial that I could give away 10, and there would still be 20. In any case, I spoil nothing to say that “Smash” remains the story of a Monroe musical called “Bombshell.” But in this version the actresses are not midlevel hopefuls; rather Ivy Lynn (Robyn Hurder) is already a star, and Karen Cartwright (Caroline Bowman) her longtime understudy. They are not in competition — at first.That changes dramatically when Ivy reads a book about Method acting. No longer content to play a “bubbly, sparkly” Monroe, she insists on giving her character more depth. Even though this is exactly what the creative team has been trying to avoid — a show that wallows in tawdry tragedy — she hires a coach from the Actors Studio, keepers of the Method flame. When this strange, forbidding coach arrives, pushing absurd ideas and amphetamines, “Bombshell” begins to crater.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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      NYT Crossword Answers for April 11, 2025

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      Jesse Guzman opens our solving weekend.Jump to: Tricky CluesFRIDAY PUZZLE — Perhaps moving from the themed puzzles to the themeless ones during the course of a week is not as traumatic for solvers as I originally thought.In The New York Times, themed crosswords run Monday through Thursday, as well as on Sunday. I like to think of a theme set as the skeleton of a grid, the bones that hold everything else up. As the week goes on and the puzzles become progressively harder, solvers often rely on the themes to help solve the fill that surround them.Or at least that’s what I thought. Swashbuckling displays of wordplay are my jam, and I assumed that everyone appreciated the themes as much as I did. Over the years, however, some readers have confessed in the comments that they solve the puzzles without even noticing the theme. Perhaps these people were timing themselves for speed-solving purposes. But it seemed a shame to me to miss such an entertaining part of the puzzles. That’s why we discuss the themes in detail on Wordplay. We want you to wring every drop of enjoyment out of the crosswords and, to me at least, the themes play a part in that.Once we get over the angst of a tricky Thursday theme, we run straight into the themeless Friday and Saturday crosswords. I’d like to ask a question of newer solvers: Is there a significant difference between how you solve a themed puzzle versus a themeless one?This is Jesse Guzman’s second crossword in The Times and his first themeless grid.Tricky Clues15A. Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong are OPERA ROLEs in “Nixon in China,” which premiered in 1987.19A. SLAM POETS compete with one another to see whose poetry is best, which is the [war of words] in the clue.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