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      NAACP Won’t Invite Trump to Its National Convention, Breaking 116-Year Tradition

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      The move by the N.A.A.C.P., the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights organization, marked a new low in its relationship with the Trump administration.The N.A.A.C.P. will not invite President Trump to its national convention, breaking from a 116-year tradition of inviting the president to the marquee event of the largest and oldest U.S. civil rights organization.Derrick Johnson, the organization’s president, said in a statement that the decision was motivated by Mr. Trump’s policies, which he said had set back civil rights.“Donald Trump is attacking our democracy and our civil rights,” Mr. Johnson said. He added: “The president has signed unconstitutional executive orders to oppress voters and undo federal civil rights protections; he has illegally turned the military on our communities, and he continually undermines every pillar of our democracy.”The move marked a new low in the relationship between the N.A.A.C.P., which advocates for the rights of African Americans and other minority groups, and Mr. Trump. He has never attended the convention while serving as president, and the organization has vigorously confronted him in high-profile legal battles and symbolic statements.The acrimony has intensified in the second Trump administration, as Mr. Trump has cracked down on diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the federal government. The N.A.A.C.P. and affiliated organizations have been heavily involved in lawsuits seeking to undo Mr. Trump’s executive orders banning D.E.I. practices.In a statement, Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said that “the N.A.A.C.P. isn’t advancing anything but hate and division, while the President is focused on uniting our country.”Mr. Johnson noted in his statement that there is a long history of both Democratic and Republican presidents attending the convention: President Harry S. Truman spoke at the event in 1947 — a year before he signed an executive order desegregating the military. President Dwight D. Eisenhower attended in 1954 and praised the landmark Supreme Court decision banning public school racial segregation in Brown v. Board of Education. President Ronald Reagan received a cool reception when he spoke at the convention in 1981, vowing in his speech that “we will not retreat on the nation’s commitment to equal treatment of all citizens.” More

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      Trump to Again Extend TikTok’s Reprieve From U.S. Ban

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      The president plans to sign another executive order this week that would give the popular video app more time to change its ownership structure.President Trump intends to again extend the deadline for when TikTok must be separated from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, or face a ban in the United States, its third reprieve this year.Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on Tuesday that Mr. Trump would sign an executive order this week giving TikTok 90 more days — to mid-September — to find a new owner to comply with a federal law that requires the company to change its ownership structure to resolve national security concerns. TikTok’s current deadline is Thursday.“As he has said many times, President Trump does not want TikTok to go dark,” Ms. Leavitt said in a statement.Mr. Trump has repeatedly declined to enforce the law, which the Supreme Court upheld in January after Congress passed it with wide bipartisan support last year. The app’s future is part of the discussion in his administration’s ongoing trade talks with China.Mr. Trump, who issued similar delays in January and in April, has given TikTok an unexpected lifeline after its future in the United States appeared to be doomed. The president tried to ban TikTok in his first term but flipped his stance on the app last year — a shift that is credited in part to one of his donors, who has a sizable stake in ByteDance, as well as his own growing popularity on the app.The repeated extensions have raised concerns among a handful of lawmakers, who have urged Mr. Trump to clarify his plans for TikTok or force it to stop operating in the United States. They and others in Washington worry that TikTok could hand over sensitive U.S. user data to Beijing, like location information, or that China could use TikTok’s content recommendations to sway opinions and spread misinformation in the United States.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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      Adams Bars Reporter From News Conferences for Being ‘Disrespectful’

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      After a contentious exchange, Mayor Eric Adams said, “Make sure security knows he’s not allowed back into this room.”Chris Sommerfeldt, who covers City Hall for The Daily News, spent part of Tuesday reporting on ICE agents’ arrest of Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller, at a Manhattan courthouse.By then, he was already the subject of some interest himself, after Mayor Eric Adams took the extraordinary step of barring him in the future from the weekly City Hall news conferences that are reporters’ only regular chance to ask Mr. Adams whatever they want.The mayor, whose interactions with reporters have often been contentious, imposed the ban after calling Mr. Sommerfeldt “disruptive” and “disrespectful” for shouting questions without being called on first, as is the custom at the so-called off-topic events.Mr. Sommerfeldt, one of two Daily News reporters who cover City Hall, has not been called on at one of the weekly events in more than three months, the newspaper reported.The exchange that preceded the mayor’s unusual move came as he discussed his plans for the general election campaign.Elected as a Democrat in 2021, Mr. Adams is skipping the party primary this year and has said he intends to run for re-election on two ballot lines of his own creation: EndAntiSemitism and Safe&Affordable.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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      Review: He’s Here, He’s Queer, He’s the Future King of England

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      The Off Broadway play “Prince Faggot” aims to shock. But the real surprise is how good it is anyway.In 2032, a young man called Tips brings his boyfriend, Dev, home from college to meet the folks. Though cautious, Mum and Dad are neither surprised nor scandalized; after all, he’s 18, and they have known he was gay for a while.For the characters in Jordan Tannahill’s “Prince Faggot,” though, that gayness was long since a given. Early in the play, we are shown a famous picture of Tips at 4, looking adorable and, to them, arguably fey.Tips is better known to the world as Prince George of Wales, the oldest child of Prince William and Princess Catherine. The real Prince George is now 11. For that reason, I will hereafter refer to the character by his nickname. I am one of those who, as the play anticipates, resist the dragooning of a preadolescent boy into a dramatic argument about sexuality and monarchy — just as I cringe at the use of a slur I take no reclaimed pride in to market a title. If the playwright means to shock, mission accomplished.But here’s the real shocker: The play, which opened Tuesday at Playwrights Horizons, in a co-production with Soho Rep, is thrilling. Inflammatory, nose-thumbing, explicit to the point of pornography, wild and undisciplined (except in its bondage scenes) — yes, all that. Its arguments have so many holes in them, most hold water only briefly. Grievance is its top note: Tips is a whiner and Dev a theory queen. Love is everything and never enough.In other words, however objectionably conjectural, it’s real.Tannahill tries to sideline reality quickly though. In a throat-clearing prologue, he has the six actors (all exceptionally good in multiple roles) debate the propriety of telling the story in the first place. One (Mihir Kumar) argues that since “all children are ‘sexualized’ as heterosexual by default,” exploring a different framing is a kind of reparation. Another (K. Todd Freeman) retorts that to portray an actual child as queer is to invite a charge of grooming. A third (David Greenspan) adds wickedly, “Frankly, I think we’ve been doing a terrible job at grooming. I mean look at how many straights there still are.”From left, Rachel Crowl, K. Todd Freeman, N’yomi Allure Stewart and McCrea as the royals at the heart of the play.Richard Termine for 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

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      Tom Cruise to Receive an Honorary Oscar

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      The film industry will honor Tom Cruise this fall with an Honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement, along with the choreographer Debbie Allen and the production designer Wynn Thomas.Despite his death-defying stunts as the spy Ethan Hunt, Tom Cruise has yet to land an Oscar for any of the eight installments of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise. His portrayal of the sports agent Jerry Maguire in 1996 earned him a nod from the film academy for best actor, and as a producer he was up for best motion picture in 2023 with “Top Gun: Maverick.”But his career has not included a golden Oscars statuette. Until now.In November, Cruise will receive an honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards, alongside the production designer Wynn Thomas, and the choreographer and actress Debbie Allen, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced on Tuesday.Dolly Parton, the singer and actress, will be presented with the annual Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her charitable works.The honorary awards, in their 16th year, are given out by the academy’s board of governors to recognize “extraordinary distinction in lifetime achievement” in the film industry or “outstanding contributions” to the state of filmmaking. They will be presented months before the main Oscars ceremony in March and will not be televised.This time the awards celebrate four “individuals whose extraordinary careers and commitment to our filmmaking community continue to leave a lasting impact,” the academy president, Janet Yang, said in a statement.Cruise, 62, was first nominated for an Academy Award in 1990 for his portrayal of Ron Kovic, a Vietnam War veteran, in the biographical film “Born on the Fourth of July.” He has received three other nominations since then, for “Jerry Maguire,” “Magnolia,” and “Top Gun: Maverick.”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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      David Hekili Kenui Bell, an Actor in ‘Lilo & Stitch,’ Dies at 46

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      Mr. Bell’s first role in a feature film was providing comic relief in the Disney hit.In Disney’s latest live-action remake, “Lilo & Stitch,” David Hekili Kenui Bell has a short but memorable role in which he is so bewildered to see aliens that he lets his shaved ice plop to the ground. The appearance was his first in a feature film.Mr. Bell, who had played minor roles in a few productions, died on Thursday. He was 46.His sister, Jalene Bell, confirmed his death on social media on Sunday and in a family statement that did not provide a cause of death.He was credited simply as Big Hawaiian Dude on his IMDb page, but on TikTok he referred to himself as the Shave Ice Guy.“Lilo & Stitch,” which is based on the 2002 film and the animated franchise, was released on May 23 and became one of the most profitable recent films as it raked in more than $800 million in sales.His role was part of a running gag in the franchise. In those moments, a sunburned character who is relaxing somewhere drops his ice cream when the aliens arrive.In one of two movie scenes where he appeared, the aliens startle him while he sits at the beach in a sleeveless shirt, with a towel on one shoulder and sunglasses atop his head. Predictably, he drops his shaved ice.“These damn aliens owe me a shave ice,” he captioned the scene on TikTok.In the original “Lilo & Stitch,” the man dropping the ice cream is bald and is often not wearing a shirt.Mr. Bell had also appeared in two episodes of a “Magnum P.I.” remake in 2018 and 2019, as well as in one episode of a “Hawaii Five-0” remake in 2014, according to IMDb. He was involved in the upcoming film “The Wrecking Crew,” about two half brothers solving their father’s murder in Hawaii, his page on the site said.He appeared in the “One Life, Right?” commercials for the Kona Brewing Company. The ads won a 2025 Pele Award, according to his sister and the organization’s website. The Pele Awards honor excellence in advertising and design in Hawaii.Outside of acting, Mr. Bell worked at the Kona International Airport near Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, according to the social media statement from his sister.Complete information on survivors was not available.To celebrate her brother’s life and express their grief, Ms. Bell said that she and her grandson went to get shaved ice.“David loved being an actor,” doing voice-overs and traveling as part of his work, his sister said. “The film industry and entertainment was so exciting to him.” More

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      Federal Judge Certifies Class Action for Transgender People Seeking Passports

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      A preliminary injunction blocking the State Department from enforcing a new passport limit extends to all trans passport seekers.A federal judge in Boston granted class-action status to transgender and nonbinary Americans on Tuesday in a lawsuit challenging a U.S. State Department policy that requires passports to reflect only the holder’s sex recorded on their original birth certificate.The order extends a preliminary injunction blocking the State Department from enforcing the policy against six plaintiffs to apply to all class members who apply for or update passports while the case proceeds. In the earlier order from April, U.S. District Judge Julia E. Kobick concluded that the passport policy likely violates the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee because it discriminates based on sex and is “rooted in irrational prejudice toward transgender Americans.”The State Department filed an appeal of the preliminary injunction last week.The government maintains that it has a strong interest in passports that accurately reflect the holder’s sex. The State Department adopted the new policy earlier this year to comply with an executive order from President Trump directing all government agencies to limit official recognition of transgender identity and mandating that federal documents reflect what it termed the “immutable biological classification as either male or female.”In court documents, plaintiffs argued that a mismatch between the sex listed on their passport and their gender identity puts them at risk of suspicion and hostility that other Americans do not face. During the first weeks of Mr. Trump’s administration, several plaintiffs received passports with an “F” or “M” marker contrary to the one they had requested. Another learned that selecting an “X” marker, indicating a nonbinary gender identity, was no longer an option, though it had been allowed since 2022.The government argued against certifying trans and nonbinary passport holders as a legal class in the case, contending that gender identity is subjective and that a class-wide injunction would create an undue administrative burden.Judge Kobick, who was nominated by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., found that those claims did not outweigh significant harm faced by transgender and nonbinary passport holders. She noted that plaintiffs in the case had described being forced to “effectively ‘out’ themselves every time they presented their passports,” leading to anxiety and fear safety fears.“These are the types of injuries that cannot adequately be measured or compensated by money damages or a later-issued remedy,’’ she wrote. More

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      The Ever-Evolving Juneteenth Table

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      Hamburgers, hot dogs, plenty of red sodas on ice: That was the chef Lana Lagomarsini’s Juneteenth menu for years as she celebrated with her cousins in Harlem. But over time, her celebrations evolved, especially when it came to food.For the past four years, along with the chefs Nana Araba Wilmot and Deborah Jean, she’s hosted a Juneteenth cookout in Brooklyn for a couple hundred guests. Its atmosphere is familiar: A DJ plays music, guests mingle. But the menu, a mix of contributions from all three chefs, tells a story that starts in West Africa and winds through the Caribbean and the Americas before stopping in New York City.Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when the last enslaved African Americans, in Galveston, Texas, were told they were freed, about two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. The holiday became a national focal point in 2020 amid protests spurred by the killing of George Floyd and was declared a national holiday in 2021.Now, the traditional foods of the holiday, like barbecue and red food and drink, meant to symbolize the blood of enslaved ancestors, are sharing space with dishes that represent the diverse histories and regional differences of Black American cooking. In the hands of some chefs and home cooks, the Juneteenth table continues to grow, reflecting its celebrants’ histories and backgrounds.“I want to make dishes that represent my ancestors, for sure, and what I’ve learned as a chef,” Ms. Lagomarsini said.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