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      Trump Picks Kristi Noem for Homeland Security Secretary

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump selected Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota on Tuesday to run the Homeland Security Department, a critical position in charge of the nation’s immigration system.Mr. Trump has made an immigration crackdown a central element of his administration’s promises, with pledges to not only more aggressively police the border but to also carry out a wide-scale deportation operation throughout the country.Ms. Noem will play a crucial role in helping Mr. Trump deliver on those promises as she will be in charge of agencies that enforce immigration laws, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.In a statement on social media, Mr. Trump called Ms. Noem “very strong on Border Security,” noting that she sent National Guard troops to the Texas-Mexico border as governor. Ms. Noem, in her own social media statement, pledged to “secure the border and restore safety to American communities so families will again have the opportunity to pursue the American Dream.”If she is confirmed by the Senate, Ms. Noem will lead an agency that oversees entities including the Coast Guard and the Secret Service, which has weathered criticism over two attempts on Mr. Trump’s life during the presidential campaign.History suggests it will be challenging to keep Mr. Trump satisfied: During his first term, Mr. Trump cycled through six homeland security leaders.During her time as governor, Ms. Noem has made immigration a key talking point. She has been a fierce critic of the Biden administration’s immigration policies.“Biden’s open border policies are facilitating illegal border crossings,” she said in a post on X earlier this year. “This invasion must end. The federal government has to stop violating federal law. And we need to go back to President Trump’s successful immigration policies immediately.”Ms. Noem has taken action on immigration enforcement as well: In line with other Republican state leaders, she sent National Guard troops in 2023 to help Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas police the border.“The border crisis is growing worse under President Biden’s willful inaction,” she said in a statement in 2023. “Across the country, crime rates, drug overdoses, and human trafficking have all skyrocketed because our border remains a warzone.” In 2021, as the Biden administration struggled to deal with an influx of migrants at the border, Ms. Noem said repeatedly that she would refuse entry to anyone who was not authorized to be in the country.“My message to illegal immigrants is — Call me when you’re an American. In the meantime, South Dakota will not be accepting any relocation of illegal immigrants from President Biden,” she said on Facebook in April 2021.Ms. Noem became a subject of controversy when she revealed in a memoir that she shot and killed a family dog she was training because it was “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with.” More

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      Gerry Faust, Coach Who Lived a Dream at Notre Dame, Dies at 89

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      Jumping from the high school ranks to lead one of the most storied programs in college football, he lost games but rarely lost hope.Gerry Faust, who saw his childhood dream to play quarterback for the University of Notre Dame dashed, only to live out another one by rising from high school football coach in Ohio to leader of the storied Fighting Irish, died on Monday. He was 89.The university confirmed his death in a statement. It did not cite a cause or say where he died.Before Faust first strode onto the football field amid a sea of gold Notre Dame helmets in 1981, he was not unheralded. Over nearly two decades, starting in 1962, he guided Archbishop Moeller High School, in the suburbs of Cincinnati, to a jaw-dropping 174-17-2 record.Even so, he was considered an extreme outlier in taking over a marquee college program without ever having coached beyond the high school level. His hiring became known as the Bold Experiment.Faust’s five-year tenure with the Irish was checkered, with the team, a perennial powerhouse, tallying an uncharacteristically mediocre 30-26-1 record under him, with just one bowl victory, a 19-18 win over Boston College in the 1983 Liberty Bowl.But while his run was underwhelming, his underdog tale became the stuff of Notre Dame lore.“The story is one of the great stories you’ve ever heard,” the television host and Notre Dame alumnus Regis Philbin recalled in a 2007 ESPN documentary about Faust. “Guy praying for something all his life, and one day he got it.”This was not just any university, after all, but a football bastion in South Bend, Ind., where hallowed coaches like Knute Rockne and Ara Parseghian once strode the sidelines, Parseghian in the shadow of a giant “Word of Life” mural portraying Christ holding his arms aloft toward the heavens and that fans came to christen “Touchdown Jesus.”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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      Once They Were Neocons. Now Trump’s Foreign Policy Picks Are All ‘America First.’

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      The Republican Party used to have a label for the kind of foreign policy hawk that President-elect Donald J. Trump named on Tuesday as his national security adviser and is considering as his secretary of state: neocons.But while they once were neoconservatives, over the past few years Representative Michael Waltz and Senator Marco Rubio, both of Florida, have gradually shifted their positions. Sounding less like former Vice President Dick Cheney or John R. Bolton, who served as Mr. Trump’s third national security adviser, they no longer talk about foreign interventions or the prospects of regime change. Instead, they speak the language of the “America First” movement, and fit more comfortably within Mr. Trump’s often erratic worldview, in which deal-making reigns over ideology.The result is that Mr. Trump may end up with a foreign policy team composed of deep loyalists, but with roots in familiar Republican approaches. The shift that the two men have made reflects the broader marginalization of neocons throughout the Republican Party after the disaster in Iraq and the rise of America First.Mr. Trump’s loyalists, and much of the party, have now made a full conversion to that worldview, few more enthusiastically than Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host who was chosen as defense secretary on Tuesday.Mr. Hegseth channels both Mr. Trump’s avowed isolationism and his impulsive interventionism. He has also backed Mr. Trump’s occasional use of force, notably the order to killing a senior Iranian general in January 2020. Mr. Hegseth, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, described his own conversion to America First to The New York Times four years ago.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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      Whitesides Defeats Garcia in California, Handing House Democrats a Win

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      George Whitesides, a former NASA chief of staff, narrowly defeated Representative Mike Garcia, Republican of California, The Associated Press said on Tuesday night, flipping a key seat in the Antelope Valley that Democrats had long sought to win.Mr. Garcia conceded on Monday night even as votes were still being counted, after Mr. Whitesides jumped out to a roughly 7,000-vote lead.Democrats had widely seen Mr. Garcia’s Santa Clarita-based seat in the northern suburbs of Los Angeles as one of their best pickup opportunities in the Golden State. The district supported Mr. Biden in 2020, but Democrats came up short in their attempts to defeat the Republican former military pilot after running weak candidates two cycles in a row.This year, they pinned their hopes on Mr. Whitesides, the clean-cut former chief executive of Virgin Galactic who billed himself as a moderate Democrat — and also happened to be a prolific fund-raiser, a talent that helped push him over the edge in the district’s expensive Los Angeles-based media market.Democrats had hoped that by running up victories in New York and California, their party could take back the House. But while votes were still being counted in California, it appeared that after a number of setbacks for Democrats in races across the country, including in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Colorado, House Republicans were on track to win a narrow majority.On the campaign trail, Mr. Whitesides stressed in equal measure the importance of protecting women’s reproductive rights and working across the aisle. But he also spoke frequently about the jobs he created while leading Virgin Galactic, noting that the economy and affordable housing were among the top issues he heard about from voters.“In Congress, you can count on me to fight to create more good local jobs, lower everyday costs, build safe communities, protect Social Security and Medicare, and protect reproductive freedom,” Mr. Whitesides said in a statement on Monday night.The race was one of a handful in California and New York, two coastal bastions that emerged this cycle as the unlikely heart of the fight for control of the House of Representatives.Mr. Garcia, a former Navy fighter pilot, had relied heavily on his military credentials in the aviation-heavy district to help paint himself as more mainstream than many in the House G.O.P. conference. He billed himself as a check against the state’s Democratic supermajority in Sacramento, hoping to tap into a well of voter discontent with California’s high cost of living.But he was ultimately unable to withstand the overwhelming number of Democratic voters who came out to cast their ballots in this cycle’s presidential election. More

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      U.S. to Keep Sending Arms to Israel Despite Dire Conditions in Gaza

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      The State Department said Israel needs to take more steps to improve the situation among Palestinians. The United States had given the country 30 days to meet aid criteria.The State Department said on Tuesday that it did not plan to decrease weapons aid to Israel, as a 30-day deadline set by the Biden administration passed without the country substantially improving the humanitarian situation in war-devastated Gaza.Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III had warned in a letter dated Oct. 13 that the United States would reassess its military aid to Israel if it failed to increase the amount of aid allowed to enter Gaza within 30 days.The letter said that the humanitarian situation for the two million residents of Gaza was “increasingly dire” and that the amount of aid entering Gaza had fallen by 50 percent since April.By law, the U.S. government cannot give aid to foreign military forces deemed by the State Department to be committing “gross violations of human rights.”U.N. officials have said Israel’s continued blocking of humanitarian aid and targeting of humanitarian workers constitute violations of international law and could amount to war crimes.Food insecurity experts working on an initiative controlled by U.N. bodies and major relief agencies said last week that famine was imminent or most likely already occurring in northern Gaza. U.N. officials say the entire population of Gaza is facing food insecurity.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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      Airport Food Prices at JFK and LaGuardia Are About to Go Up

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      The three big airports that serve New York City have proposed allowing concession prices to rise and adding a surcharge to cover higher wages and improved worker benefits.The prices of food and drinks in the airports that serve New York City, already a pet peeve of many travelers, are set to take a sharp upward turn next year.To cover the rising costs of labor at the three big airports it operates — LaGuardia, Kennedy International and Newark Liberty International — the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has proposed rule changes that would allow restaurants and shops to raise their prices and tack on a 3 percent surcharge.Together, the changes could result in a 7.5 percent increase in January to prices that have long been the subject of complaints from travelers. An online menu for the Bobby Van’s steakhouse at Kennedy shows that a cheeseburger and fries costs $29.50 and a glass of chardonnay is $17. After a 7.5 percent increase, that meal could cost an additional $3.49, for a total of about $50.At LaGuardia on Tuesday, a bar charged $16 for chicken Caesar wraps and turkey-and-Swiss panini. Nearby, a shop sold a 12-ounce bag of almonds for $15.99.The Port Authority said the increases would help the concessions cover the costs of rising wages and better benefits for their employees. The agency, which sets the rules for the businesses that operate inside the airport terminals, has proposed gradual increases in the minimum wage for workers there.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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      Italian City in Amanda Knox Case Wants to Move On. A New Series Won’t Let It.

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      When a show produced by Ms. Knox about the murder of Meredith Kercher was filmed in Perugia, an outcry by residents led the mayor to apologize.Seventeen years after Amanda Knox, the American exchange student, was arrested and charged with killing her roommate in Perugia, a picturesque university city in central Italy, some of its citizens are outraged that their city is once again being dragged into a tragedy that they would prefer to forget.This month, when cast and crew arrived there for a two-day shoot for a Hulu series about the case — a show for which Ms. Knox and Monica Lewinsky are executive producers — Mayor Vittoria Fernandi felt obliged to write a heartfelt letter of apology to the city for the hurt caused by their presence.One resident, honoring the memory of Meredith Kercher, the slain roommate, draped a sheet from a balcony with “Respect for Meredith” painted in bold red letters. A council member questioned on social media whether the mayor should have allowed the production to shoot in Perugia, where the crime has long overshadowed the city’s “history, art and beauty.”An editorial in daily newspaper La Nazione wrote, “Perhaps Meredith and Perugia would have deserved more respect without having to sacrifice the dignity of a murdered student and a brutalized city to business.”It hardly mattered that after spending four years in prison, Ms. Knox was acquitted for the death of Ms. Kercher, a 21-year-old student from England who was murdered in the house they shared.People forget “that she, too, is a victim in this case,” said Luca Luparia Donati, the director of the Italy Innocence Project, who is representing Ms. Knox in a slander case.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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      ¿La elección de Trump fue un revés para las mujeres de EE. UU.? Ni ellas están de acuerdo

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      Kamala Harris habría sido la primera mujer presidenta en los casi 250 años de historia del país. Pero muchas mujeres eligieron a Donald Trump, a pesar de su historial de sexismo.Para muchos estadounidenses de izquierda, está rotundamente claro que las mujeres que apoyaron a Donald Trump en las elecciones presidenciales votaron en contra de sus propios intereses.Las mujeres liberales, en particular, han pasado los últimos días prácticamente atónitas, dándole vueltas a cómo otras mujeres podrían haber rechazado a Kamala Harris, quien habría sido la primera mujer en dirigir Estados Unidos en sus casi 250 años de historia. En su lugar, eligieron a un candidato que desperdiga misoginia aparentemente con regocijo. Por segunda vez.Una votante de Maine, entrevistada después de que Trump declarara la victoria, ofreció una reflexión compartida por muchas personas. En sus palabras: “La hermandad no apareció”.En muchos sentidos, los resultados de las elecciones parecieron contradecir generaciones de avances hacia la igualdad de la mujer y para el feminismo en general. En las últimas décadas, las mujeres han avanzado en casi todas las facetas de la vida estadounidense, representan en general una mayor proporción de la mano de obra que en el pasado, ocupan puestos de trabajo bien remunerados y superan a los hombres en la educación superior, aunque siguen estando infrarrepresentadas en los niveles más altos de la empresa y el gobierno.Ahora se encuentran en un país donde Trump ganó decisivamente con una campaña que enfrentó a hombres contra mujeres, sentándose con conductores de pódcast que comercian con el sexismo y eligiendo a un compañero de fórmula que había criticado a las mujeres solteras como “señoras con gatos y sin hijos”. Trump se atribuyó el mérito de nombrar a los jueces de la Corte Suprema que anularon el derecho constitucional al aborto, pero pareció pagar un bajo precio en las urnas. Inmediatamente después de las elecciones circularon por las redes sociales publicaciones de hombres que decían: “tu cuerpo, mi elección”.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