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      Molly on 2 Alternatives to Certain Current Events

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      An underground party memoir; an argument for nonhuman life.Bequest of Florence S. Schuette, 1945Dear readers,For reasons that need not be stated, here are two books that represent an alternative to the pace of the news. Enjoy at whatever speed suits you.—Molly“Health and Safety: A Breakdown,” by Emily WittNonfiction, 2024When I say this book is breathtaking, I am not trotting out a metaphor; it really did alter my respiration! Sometimes in the direction of excited quickening, other times toward a sorrowful (temporary) arrest. “Health and Safety” is a memoir in the form of fieldwork; its topic is a specific pre-pandemic party scene in New York that revolved around music, dance, sex, design and consciousness-altering drugs.Witt, a staff writer at The New Yorker, takes pleasure seriously in a way that few contemporary American writers do. The book laces strands of history and brain chemistry and auto-anthropology into her account of a lapsed fairyland — a smattering of clubs and illegal venues in 2010s Brooklyn that attracted people who were keen on losing their minds in a specifically connoisseurial way.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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      Vote to End the Trump Era

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      Opinion | The Editorial Board You already know Donald Trump. He is unfit to lead. Watch him. Listen to those who know him best. He tried to subvert an election and remains a threat to democracy. He helped overturn Roe, with terrible consequences. Mr. Trump’s corruption and lawlessness go beyond elections: It’s his whole ethos. […] More

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      Federal Jury Finds Ex-Officer Brett Hankison Guilty of Violating Breonna Taylor’s Rights

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      The former detective fired 10 shots through Ms. Taylor’s apartment in a raid that set off a wave of protests across the country.The former police detective who fired 10 shots through Breonna Taylor’s apartment in a fatal raid in Louisville, Ky., in 2020 was found guilty on Friday of violating her rights by using excessive force.But the jury cleared the former officer, Brett Hankison, of violating the rights of Ms. Taylor’s neighbors.Mr. Hankison, who is white, was the only officer to be charged for his actions during the raid, though none of the shots he fired hit Ms. Taylor. Two other officers, also white, fired the shots that killed Ms. Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who worked as an emergency room technician.The shooting was among several police killings that set off a wave of protests across the country in 2020.It was not the first time that Mr. Hankison faced a jury in the case. Last year, a judge declared a mistrial after jurors failed to come to a unanimous verdict on federal civil rights charges.This is a developing story. Check back for updates. More

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      Montana Camper Offered His Killer a Beer Before He Was Murdered, Police Say

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      DNA from a beer can helped lead the authorities to an arrest in the killing of Dustin Kjersem, whose death was originally reported as a possible bear attack, officials said.A Montana camper whose mutilated body was found in a forest last month was brutally killed by a stranger he welcomed to his campsite and offered a beer, the authorities said this week, a gesture they say ultimately led to the killer’s arrest.The stranger, Daren Christopher Abbey, 41, of Basin, Mont., who was working in construction in the Big Sky area of southern Montana, was arrested on Saturday after the authorities linked his DNA to that found on a beer can on the floor of a tent belonging to the victim, Dustin Kjersem, 35, according to court records.Mr. Abbey confessed on Tuesday to killing Mr. Kjersem, 35, and was later charged with deliberate homicide, Dan Springer, the sheriff of Gallatin County said at a news conference on Thursday.Mr. Abbey encountered Mr. Kjersem by chance, the authorities said, noting that they still didn’t know the motive for the killing and that the investigation could continue for months.“This appears to be a heinous crime committed by an individual who had no regard for the life of Dustin Kjersem,” Sheriff Springer said.On Oct. 10, Mr. Kjersem traveled to a forested area near Big Sky to camp, the authorities said. He had planned to pick up his girlfriend the next day, a Friday, so the two could spend the weekend camping.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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      No, Vote Spikes on Election Night Do Not Indicate Voter Fraud

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      The false claimVote totals appear to suddenly surge on election night, sometimes benefiting just one candidate. Some people on social media have falsely claimed that this proves fraudulent votes were counted.Why it is falseSudden increases in vote totals are a normal part of how election results are reported to the public on election night.All real-time election feeds, including those used by The New York Times, rely on unofficial data that companies or news organizations collect from precincts, counties or states. Those sources often update slowly, as votes are counted and reported. But sometimes, election officials release a larger tally of votes all at once, like when a large batch of early or mail-in ballots are reported.States and counties have different procedures for how votes are counted. In some places, mail-in and early ballots are counted first, while in other places they are counted last or in the middle. Since mail-in ballots have historically been used more by Democratic voters than by Republicans, the timing of when those votes are counted — and reported — can change who is leading the race at any given time, leading to a surge in the tabulated vote for one candidate. That happened in 2020, when votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr., then the Democratic nominee, were reported overnight as many Trump supporters were asleep.These vote surges happen in every election and can benefit any candidate.How the falsehoods are being usedA popular claim from the 2020 election showed Mr. Biden suddenly surging past Donald J. Trump, then the president, in Wisconsin. One chart, originally created by the elections data website FiveThirtyEight, used accurate data, but was held up as evidence of voter fraud.The chart reflected a quirk in how data was reported and who benefited in the moment. At around 4 a.m. the day after the election, as votes were still being counted, more than 170,000 absentee votes were reported from the city of Milwaukee — which leans heavily Democratic. Both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump gained votes at the time, but Mr. Biden gained much more. More

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      Uncertainty Reigns in Nevada With Rise of Nonpartisan Voters

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      With early voting coming to a close, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris must now ensure their respective bases show up on Election Day, while chasing down those whose choice is less clear.As early voting came to a close in Nevada, many of the state’s most veteran pollsters, pundits and political operatives — no strangers to close elections and their accompanying jitters — are finding it uniquely difficult to predict what happens next.Republicans, thrilled with their surprise early voting edge, say they are well on their way to making former President Donald J. Trump the first Republican to win the state since 2004. Democrats agree that Republicans have seized an unusual and anxiety-inducing advantage, but insist that their prized organizing machine will put Vice President Kamala Harris over the top.But what’s making this presidential election different is the sheer number of voters who don’t officially identify with either party. Thanks to the state’s relatively new automatic voter registration law, nonpartisan voters became Nevada’s largest voting bloc in 2022, outpacing both Democratic and Republican registrations.Figuring out who those voters are, and how or if they will cast a ballot, has been a crucial challenge for the campaigns scrambling to find and sway those last few persuadable people. Changes in voting patterns wrought by the pandemic four years ago are also throwing prognosticators for a loop.“The Achilles’ heel of early vote analysis is that it’s really difficult to make cycle-to-cycle comparisons,” said Adam Jentleson, who was a senior aide to Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the longtime Democratic leader, “and that has never been more true than in this cycle.”All of those factors combined mean “you are flying blind,” he added.The race is tied, according to The New York Times’s polling average. Both Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris have visited Nevada multiple times, emphasizing that every ballot will make a difference.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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      Supreme Court Rejects Bid to Block Count of Some Pennsylvania Provisional Ballots

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      Republicans had sought to block the counting of provisional ballots by voters whose mail-in ballots were deemed invalid. Democrats celebrated the ruling as a win in a crucial state.The Supreme Court cleared the way on Friday for some voters in Pennsylvania whose mail-in ballots had been deemed invalid to cast provisional ballots in person, rejecting an appeal by Republicans not to count such votes.Democrats immediately celebrated the decision, which like in many such emergency petitions was unsigned and gave no reasoning, as a victory in a state crucial to each party’s presidential and Senate hopes. It could affect thousands of mail-in ballots in a contest where the latest polls show Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump virtually tied.The ruling was one in a string of court victories for Democrats, whose voters are more likely to use mail ballots and were therefore more likely to have had their votes tossed out if Republicans had succeeded in the case.“In Pennsylvania and across the country, Trump and his allies are trying to make it harder for your vote to count, but our institutions are stronger than his shameful attacks,” the Harris campaign said in a statement after the ruling. “Today’s decision confirms that for every eligible voter, the right to vote means the right to have your vote counted.”The Republican National Committee was “disappointed” in the court’s ruling, a spokeswoman said.In a brief statement attached to the court’s order, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote that the case was “a matter of considerable importance.” But he said the justices had no way to give the Republicans what they were asking for — a statewide block on allowing these provisional ballots.Only Butler County elections officials were parties to the case, he wrote, which meant the justices could not force elections officials in other counties to block those ballots. He was joined by two other conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch.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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      Judge Allows Unusual G.O.P. Strategy to Pump Money Into Senate Races

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      Democrats had claimed that the advertising strategy may have violated federal election laws establishing strict limits on spending by national party committees to aid individual candidates.A federal judge ruled on Friday that Senate Republicans may continue to pump tens of millions of dollars into key swing state races in the final days of the 2024 campaign by employing an unusual advertising strategy that Democrats had claimed was potentially illegal.By reclassifying campaign ads as fund-raising appeals, Republicans have been able to avoid strict limits Congress has placed on spending by national party committees to aid individual candidates, helping to offset a significant fund-raising deficit they face in states with critical Senate races, such as Arizona and Pennsylvania.House Democrats’ campaign arm sued the Federal Election Commission for failing to stop the Republicans and sought to either ban the practice or clear the way to use it themselves.But Judge Randolph D. Moss, of the U.S. District Court in Washington, wrote Friday that he was “unpersuaded” to outlaw a practice that the commission had not. He said Democratic and Republican campaign committees — those that support Senate and House candidates — are “all on an even playing field” and the lack of action taken by the Federal Election Commission had not tilted it.His ruling could give Republicans a last-minute boost in the fierce contest for the Senate, where they are favored to pick up the one or two seats they need to regain control of the chamber, but where polls show that several races are close.Sean Cooksey, the Republican chairman of the Federal Election Commission, also welcomed the ruling. “This is a huge win for the rule of law and political speech!” he wrote on social media.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