Elections

President Trump plans to meet with top White House officials on Wednesday to discuss a proposal that could secure TikTok’s future in the United States, two people familiar with the plans said.Mr. Trump will consider a proposal for a new ownership structure for the popular video app, which is owned by the Chinese internet giant ByteDance. Lawmakers and other U.S. officials have argued that the app’s ties to China raise national security concerns, and a federal law that was passed last year requires TikTok to change its ownership or face a ban in the United States. The latest deadline for that ban is Saturday.The meeting is set to include Vice President JD Vance, whom Mr. Trump tapped to find an arrangement to save the popular app early in February, and other top officials, the two people said on the condition of anonymity. The new ownership structure, they said, could include Blackstone, the private equity giant, and Oracle, the technology company.The meeting is another twist in the long national saga of TikTok, which surged in popularity in the United States despite sustained and deep scrutiny in Washington and state capitals. Mr. Trump, who made repeated assurances that he wants to save the app, extended the deadline for a deal in January and suggested that he might do so again if a suitable plan was not reached by early this month.TikTok did not immediately return a request for comment.It is not clear that the kind of deal under discussion would comply with the law, which calls for no more than 20 percent of TikTok or its parent company to be owned by people or companies in so-called foreign adversary countries, a list that includes China.The law also bars a new entity from working with ByteDance to operate its video-recommendation technology or creating a data-sharing agreement.Mr. Trump suggested last week that he might relax upcoming tariffs on China in exchange for the country’s support of a deal.TikTok has maintained that it is not for sale, in part, it says, because the Chinese government would block a deal. More

California Democrats rejected two Republican bills that would have banned transgender athletes from female sports. In a rare turn, Republicans tried to use the Democratic governor’s own words to challenge Democrats.It was a discussion of a kind rarely, if ever, seen in the California State Capitol. For hours on Tuesday, Republicans repeatedly invoked the views of Gov. Gavin Newsom, while the governor’s fellow Democrats took pains to avoid saying his name.At issue were two Republican bills that would have banned transgender athletes from female sports, just days after Mr. Newsom had reiterated his personal belief that their participation was unfair to those who were born as girls.“For the first time ever, Gavin Newsom and I agree,” said Karen England, executive director of the Capitol Resource Institute, a conservative advocacy group.Democrats, who control the Assembly Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports and Tourism, ultimately quashed the bills after dozens of people spoke in a packed hearing room. The debate brought into stark focus an extraordinary rift among California Democrats on the issue of transgender participation in female sports.Mr. Newsom, a longtime supporter of expanding L.G.B.T.Q. rights, publicly broke with his party last month when he said on his new podcast that he thinks it’s “deeply unfair” for transgender athletes to compete in female sports. The governor repeated that position Friday during an interview on “Real Time With Bill Maher,” in which he also said the Democratic Party brand is “toxic.”Mr. Newsom has not publicly weighed in on the transgender sports bills, and his office declined to comment on Tuesday. But his recent comments have scrambled the conventional coalitions in California’s Capitol, where Democrats hold a supermajority in the Legislature and occupy every statewide office. While it is common for Democrats to split on bills concerning the environment, economy, crime or education, divisions over L.G.B.T.Q. rights are rare.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

Influential figures on the right have largely cheered on the opening months of the Trump presidency. But as the administration has rushed to carry out deportations as quickly as possible, making mistakes and raising concerns about due process along the way, the unified front in favor of President Trump’s immigration purge is beginning to crack.When the administration deported a professional makeup artist and accused him of being part of a criminal gang, the enormously popular podcaster Joe Rogan balked.“You’ve got to get scared that people who are not criminals are getting lassoed up and deported and sent to El Salvador prisons,” Mr. Rogan, who endorsed Mr. Trump, said on his show “The Joe Rogan Experience.” He added that the case was “horrific.”When the administration arrested a former Columbia University graduate student who had been involved in campus protests, the far-right commentator Ann Coulter questioned the move.“There’s almost no one I don’t want to deport, but unless they’ve committed a crime, isn’t this a violation of the First Amendment?” Ms. Coulter wrote on social media.The dissenting voices, which have been limited mostly to commentators rather than elected Republicans, are remarkable because conservatives don’t often openly break with the president. And while the objections have largely been contained to tactics — not the overarching goal of ramping up deportations — the cracks show how seriously some conservatives are taking the administration’s aggressive and at times slapdash methods.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

The state-owned automakers, longtime joint venture partners of Ford and Nissan, might combine operations as Beijing consolidates its sprawling car sector.Two of China’s biggest state-owned automakers are in advanced discussions to merge, in a deal that would create a formidable manufacturer of cars and military vehicles but could also create problems for their American and Japanese partners.Dongfeng Motor and Changan Automobile have conducted detailed talks on how to combine their operations and told their foreign partners of their intentions, said two people with detailed knowledge of the discussions who were not authorized to comment.Although little known outside China, each company produces slightly more cars for its own brands and through joint ventures than global automakers like Mercedes-Benz or BMW. Dongfeng and Changan together make about 5 million cars a year — more than Ford Motor and almost as many as General Motors or Stellantis, the giant that owns Fiat, Chrysler and Peugeot.A merger of Dongfeng and Changan would represent a significant consolidation of China’s auto market, the world’s largest, and another sign of the country’s rapid embrace of electric vehicles. Both companies have considerably more factory capacity for producing gasoline-powered cars than they need.Beijing’s hope is that a combined company will be able to close excess factories for gasoline cars and become more successful in electric cars.China’s national government owns controlling stakes in Dongfeng and Changan. Dongfeng is a leading supplier of military vehicles to the People’s Liberation Army and Changan is a subsidiary of a Chinese military contractor, which could draw unwanted attention from the Trump administration to a new, larger military supplier and its joint venture partners.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

A long-simmering fight over whether to allow members of Congress to vote remotely after the birth of a new child is coming to a head on Tuesday afternoon, when Speaker Mike Johnson’s behind-the-scenes efforts to quash the majority-supported change to the chamber’s rules will be tested on the House floor.The quiet push from a bipartisan group of younger lawmakers and new parents started more than a year ago, when Representative Anna Paulina Luna, Republican of Florida, began agitating for a change to House rules that would allow new mothers to designate a colleague to vote by proxy on their behalf for up to six weeks after giving birth. Ms. Luna landed on the idea after her own child was born.There is no maternity or paternity leave for members of Congress, who can take time away from the office without sacrificing their pay but cannot vote if they are not physically in the Capitol. Proponents of the change have called it a common-sense fix to modernize Congress, where there are more women and more younger members than there were 200 years ago.Democrats including Representatives Brittany Pettersen of Colorado, who gave birth to her second child earlier this year, and Sara Jacobs of Colorado joined Ms. Luna’s effort, expanding the resolution to include new fathers and up to 12 weeks of proxy voting during a parental leave.But Mr. Johnson has adamantly opposed them at every turn, arguing that proxy voting is unconstitutional, even though the Supreme Court refused to take up a Republican-led lawsuit challenging pandemic-era proxy voting rules in the House. Mr. Johnson and his allies have argued that any accommodation that allow members to vote without being physically at the Capitol, no matter how narrow, creates a slippery slope for more, and that it harms member collegiality.“I do believe its an existential issue for this body,” Representative Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina and chairwoman of the Rules Committee, said on Tuesday. “Congress is defined as the ‘act of coming together and meeting.’” Changing that, she said, “undermines the fabric of that sacred act of convening.”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

A popular electric vehicle made by the Chinese consumer electronics giant Xiaomi crashed into a concrete guardrail while deploying its autonomous driving feature. Three people died.China’s Xiaomi, a consumer electronics giant turned automaker, said it is cooperating with a police investigation into a fatal crash involving one of its electric vehicles while the driver was using the car’s autonomous driving features.A Xiaomi SU7 sedan drove into a concrete guardrail on an expressway in eastern China late on Saturday night at around 60 miles per hour, according to a post on Xiaomi’s official social media account. On Tuesday, local media published reports about the collision and ensuing fire, which killed three college students, along with pictures of the charred remains of the vehicle.Xiaomi said the driver deployed the company’s Navigate On Autopilot, an assisted driving feature, while going around 70 miles per hour on the expressway. The car was traveling at that speed when it reached a roadblock, because a portion of the road was under repair with traffic diverted into a different lane.Seconds before the collision, the car warned that there were obstacles ahead and started to decelerate but it was too late. The company said it called the police and emergency services.The fatal crash took place one year after the launch of Xiaomi’s SU7 electric vehicle, marking a major shift for a company that had gained a cultlike following for its smartphones and home appliances. And the SU7, which bears a resemblance to the Porsche Taycan at a fraction of the price, has been a breakthrough success in China’s cutthroat electric vehicle market. It sold more than 200,000 units in its first year.The ability of a company with no automotive experience to build and sell a car capable of gaining market share so quickly is a testament to the advantages of China’s supply chain of batteries and key components for electric vehicles. It is also a warning to the automotive industry that the competition is no longer limited to traditional car brands, but to almost any company adept at manufacturing electronic products efficiently and inexpensively.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

The United States is ending its financial support for family planning programs in developing countries, cutting nearly 50 million women off from access to contraception.This policy change has attracted little attention amid the wholesale dismantling of American foreign aid, but it stands to have enormous implications, including more maternal deaths and an overall increase in poverty. It derails an effort that had brought long-acting contraceptives to women in some of the poorest and most isolated parts of the world in recent years.The United States provided about 40 percent of the funding governments contributed to family planning programs in 31 developing countries, some $600 million, in 2023, the last year for which data is available, according to KFF, a health research organization.That American funding provided contraceptive devices and the medical services to deliver them to more than 47 million women and couples, which is estimated to have averted 17.1 million unintended pregnancies and 5.2 million unsafe abortions, according to an analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, a sexual health research organization. Without this annual contribution, 34,000 women could die from preventable maternal deaths each year, the Guttmacher calculation concluded.“The magnitude of the impact is mind-boggling,” said Marie Ba, who leads the coordination team for the Ouagadougou Partnership, an initiative to accelerate investments and access to family planning in nine West African countries.The funding has been terminated as part of the Trump administration’s disassembling of the United States Agency for International Development. The State Department, into which the skeletal remains of U.S.A.I.D. was absorbed on Friday, did not reply to a request for comment on the decision to stop funding family planning. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has described the terminated aid projects as wasteful and not aligned with American strategic interest.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

President Trump said he has settled on a final plan for sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs, but he declined to reveal the details ahead of an announcement in the Rose Garden at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, a move that appeared to rattle markets and governments around the world.Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, Mr. Trump said the U.S. would be “very nice, relatively speaking,” in imposing tariffs on a vast array of countries — including U.S. allies — that he believes are unfairly inhibiting the flow of American exports.“That word reciprocal is very important,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “What they do to us, we do to them.”The administration has been weighing several different strategies for the tariffs in recent weeks. One option examined by the White House is a 20 percent flat tariff on all imports, which advisers have said could help raise more than $6 trillion of revenue for the U.S. government.But advisers have also discussed the idea of assigning different tariff levels to different countries, depending on the trade barriers they impose against American products. They have also said that some countries might avoid tariffs entirely by striking trade deals with the United States.A White House official cautioned that the decision was not set in stone and that the president would make the final decision.By Tuesday morning, the president’s comments appeared to leave markets uneasy. Stocks edged down at the start of trading, with the S&P 500 opening about 0.4 percent lower after a choppy day yesterday that ended with the index registering its worst month and quarter since 2022.Investors are still seeking clarity on the scope of Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, and the economic uncertainty surrounding a global trade war has fueled stock market volatility in recent weeks. Mr. Trump plans to unfurl his tariff plans on Wednesday at an event in the Rose Garden with his cabinet, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.Danielle Kaye More