Elections

Hurricane Milton’s death toll was highest far from the coast where it made landfall, in a retirement community where few were braced for destructive tornadoes.Victor Linero was watching coverage of Hurricane Milton’s churn toward Florida when, suddenly, he saw a live video of a tornado near his grandfather’s home — hours before the hurricane was supposed to hit on the opposite side of the state.In a panic, Mr. Linero warned his grandfather over the phone that he needed to take cover.“I was screaming, ‘Papi, get shelter now!’” recalled Mr. Linero, 26, who was raised by his grandfather. “And then I start hearing, ‘Oh my God. Ahh!’”He heard his grandfather, Alejandro Alonso, 66, let out a final scream. Then the other end of the line went silent.By the time it was over, what looked to be two tornadoes had plowed through Spanish Lakes Country Club Village, the retirement community north of Fort Pierce where Mr. Alonso lived. They had decimated mobile homes, tossed trucks aside and toppled trees, all while Hurricane Milton was nearly 200 miles away, in the Gulf of Mexico.In the end, Mr. Alonso, his 70-year-old girlfriend and four other people were dead. Roughly 125 houses, all of them mobile homes, were destroyed. It was one of Hurricane Milton’s most perplexing ironies: that an area on the opposite coast from where the brunt of the hurricane hit saw more deaths than any other single spot during the storm.“We were not in an evacuation area,” Anita Perrotta, who lives in the community with her husband, said as she described the two of them hiding in their home at Spanish Lakes while the tornado threw debris against it.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

Hurricane Milton has displaced people all over Florida. It left thousands of shelter animals in limbo, too.On Friday, animal shelters in Florida were struggling to handle an influx of animals after the storm and scrambling to relocate them, sending some as far away as Massachusetts.Temporary evacuation centers for animals had opened, including one at Alaqua Animal Refuge, in Florida’s Northern Panhandle, which began receiving animals from coastal areas at risk of flooding. Even small shelters were taking in animals, wherever they had spare kennels.“Many shelters were over capacity before the storm,” said Sharon Hawa, senior manager of emergency services at Best Friends Animal Society, a national organization that helped coordinate the transport of around 250 of Florida’s shelter animals this week.In an event like Milton, Ms. Hawa said, shelters usually receive animals picked up by people who are concerned that the strays could die in a storm, as well as ones that get separated from their owners during the storm.“Then there are animals that have already been part of their shelter population,” Ms. Hawa said, adding, “You’re talking about potentially 50, 60, 70, maybe 100 more animals.”On top of that, some shelters suffered property damage. “There are shelters where people are having to wade through water to get there to see if their shelter can even be operational,” Ms. Hawa said.In the lead-up to the storm, people in Clewiston, Fla., about 80 miles northwest of Fort Lauderdale, brought in several stray dogs to the city, said Thomas Lewis, the police chief. Soon, the city’s animal services, which was only set up to handle 14 dogs, had more than 50. And Clewiston was in the direct path of the storm.Mr. Lewis wanted to save the animals, a mix of pit bull mutts and small dogs, and worked with Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League, in West Palm Beach, to relocate more than 40 of them.Nearly all were taken by truck to West Palm Beach. From there, 10 of them were flown to Panama City Beach, and from there, they continued their journey to the Humane Society of North Texas.Chief Lewis said it was good that they had been relocated, since the town was hit by tornadoes. But he wondered what would happen to them next. More

The musical, created by Shaina Taub, announced that it will play its final performance on Jan. 5 and start a national tour next fall.“Suffs,” a new musical about the American women’s suffrage movement, has a lot going for it: Its producers include Hillary Rodham Clinton and Malala Yousafzai, it won Tony Awards for its score and its book, and its audiences seemed energized by how the show’s themes resonated with the candidacy of Kamala Harris.But the show has struggled to sell enough tickets to defray its running costs, and on Friday night the producers announced that it would close on Jan. 5. At the time of its closing, it will have had 24 previews and 301 regular performances. The show announced plans for a national tour, which will begin in Seattle in September 2025.The musical, which takes place in the early 20th century, depicts two generations of women eager to win the right to vote, but divided over how best to do that. Shaina Taub, a singer-songwriter, wrote the book and score and stars as Alice Paul, an influential suffragist. It was directed by Leigh Silverman.The show began previews on March 26 and opened on April 18 at the Music Box Theater. A pre-Broadway production at the Public Theater received reviews that were mixed; the reviews of the Broadway production were somewhat better. Writing in The New York Times, the chief theater critic Jesse Green called it “a good show and good for the world” but said “to be great, a musical (like a great movement) must grab you by the throat. ‘Suffs’ too often settles for holding up signs.”The show’s grosses have been middling — during the week that ended Oct. 6, it grossed $679,589, which is generally not sufficient to sustain a large-cast musical.“Suffs” is the sixth musical to announce closing dates since early May, following “Lempicka,” “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” “The Who’s Tommy,” “The Notebook” and “Water for Elephants.” Broadway is always a difficult industry, and most shows fail, but the odds of success are particularly long now because production costs have risen, audience size has fallen, and a high volume of shows are competing for attention.“Suffs,” with Jill Furman and Rachel Sussman as lead producers, was capitalized for $19 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That money has not been recouped. More

As Vice President Kamala Harris has sought to stake out ground in the political center that might appeal to swing voters, she has campaigned with former Representative Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican, and pledged to appoint a Republican to her cabinet if elected. Ms. Harris added to that strategy while visiting the battleground state of Arizona on Friday, saying she would convene a bipartisan council of advisers on policy if she wins the White House.At a campaign event geared toward Republican supporters in Scottsdale, Ariz., Ms. Harris said the council would be an attempt to “put some structure” around policy discussions that reach across the aisle.“Wherever they come from, I love good ideas,” she said at the Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale. “We have to have a healthy two-party system.”The bipartisan council proposal is the latest effort by the Harris campaign to court Republican voters disaffected with former President Donald J. Trump. It also dovetails with the vice president’s attempts to counter her image as a California liberal. She has sought to move away from some of the progressive positions she took during her 2020 presidential run.On Friday, Ms. Harris argued that the council was in the “best interest” of all Americans because of the constructive feedback it would inspire.Ms. Harris has secured high-profile endorsements from conservative Trump critics — including from more than 100 former G.O.P. officials. The campaign has a newsletter and holds events under the banner of Republicans for Harris.The vice president has also campaigned in areas Democrats do not traditionally visit. Last week, she held a campaign event in Ripon, Wis., the birthplace of the G.O.P. She stood with Ms. Cheney, a conservative Republican and the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, as Ms. Cheney declared that it was “our duty” to reject Mr. Trump and vote for Ms. Harris. More

Former President Donald J. Trump escalated the nativist, anti-immigration rhetoric that has animated his political career with a speech Friday in Aurora, Colo., where he repeated false and grossly exaggerated claims about undocumented immigrants that local Republican officials have refuted.For weeks, Aurora has been fending off false rumors about the city. And its conservative Republican mayor, Mike Coffman, said in a statement on Friday that he hoped to show Mr. Trump that Aurora was “a considerably safe city.”But Mr. Trump has made debunked claims about Aurora, a Denver suburb, such a central part of his stump speech that he took a campaign detour to Colorado, which has not voted for a Republican in a presidential election since 2004, to make the case in person at a rally at the Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center.And during a meandering 80-minute speech Mr. Trump repeated claims, which have been debunked by local officials, that Aurora had been “invaded and conquered,” described the United States as an “occupied state,” called for the death penalty “for any migrant that kills an American citizen” and revived a promise to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport suspected members of drug cartels and criminal gangs without due process.That law allows for the summary deportation of people from nations with which the United States is at war, that have invaded the United States or that have engaged in “predatory incursions.” It was far from clear whether the law could be used in the way that Mr. Trump was proposing.The false tale that Aurora, Colorado’s third-largest city, was occupied by armed Venezuelans stemmed from a dispute over housing conditions.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

Dr. Kristin Lyerly is looking to make inroads in a heavily Catholic part of the state.It was 7:15 a.m. on Sunday, and a blood-orange sun had turned the sky lavender. Dr. Kristin Lyerly was getting ready to leave.She had laundry going, and her bags half-packed. She felt as if she might be forgetting something. She was about to make the 400-mile drive from her home in De Pere, Wis., for a 10-day stint at a medical center in Hibbing, Minn., where she has been working as an obstetrician-gynecologist following the overturning of Roe v. Wade.Lyerly has another job, too: running for Congress.Abortion rights have become central to the fight for control of the White House and Congress, and Democrats have worked hard to bring the issue to life through the stories of women who have had abortions. Lyerly, though, is doing something a little rarer: campaigning as a Democrat who can talk about providing reproductive care in post-Roe America.She said she had bumped into children she delivered on the trail. She has been approached by women at campaign events seeking basic information about handling an unwanted pregnancy or a miscarriage. She hasn’t heeded the advice that she said she got from men suggesting she talk about the issue a little bit less.“Reproductive rights,” she told a group of teachers who gathered to knock on doors in Green Bay, Wis., last weekend, “are on everybody’s mind.”Lyerly’s district, Wisconsin’s Eighth, encompasses a rural swath of the northeastern part of the state, the city of Green Bay and the peninsula that looks like the state’s pinkie finger dipping into Lake Michigan. It is difficult territory for Democrats. Former Representative Mike Gallagher, a Republican who chafed at Trump’s influence over his party, held it easily for seven years before suddenly retiring in April; a Trump-endorsed former gas station chain owner, Tony Wied, is favored to win the seat.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

Chris Miller rode out Hurricane Helene just over two weeks ago inside his picturesque yellow home across from the Gulf of Mexico in Bradenton Beach, a tiny Florida city on a barrier island. As the storm surge rose, he readied a wet suit in case he needed to escape.As a huge wall of water swept away his next-door neighbor’s house, he called the mayor, who lives down the road.“I told him, ‘Bev’s house is headed your way,’” Mr. Miller recalled on Friday.So when Hurricane Milton bore down this week, with Bradenton Beach directly in its path, Mr. Miller knew that he had to evacuate.“After we saw what we saw,” he said, “we couldn’t stay.”Neither did anyone else, Bradenton Beach officials believe — the first time in recent memory that even the most dedicated die-hards had no interest in riding out the storm. The forecast was simply too scary, and the memory of Helene — and Ian, another frightening storm two years earlier — was too fresh.“Most of the time, we have a few stragglers,” Mayor John Chappie, who also stayed on the island for Helene, said on Friday. “I don’t think we had any this time.”Dan and June DeBaun returned to their home in Bradenton Beach briefly on Friday to survey the latest damage, which was less severe than what was inflicted by Helene.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 Arizona Democratic Party shut down a campaign office in suburban Phoenix after it was struck by gunfire and a BB gun on three occasions over the past month, said a local official, Lauren Kuby, on Friday.Nobody was hurt in the shootings, but they raised concerns about the safety of campaign workers and volunteers in the thick of a bitterly fought election that has already seen assassination attempts against former President Donald J. Trump.Ms. Kuby, a Democratic candidate for the Arizona State Senate and former city council member in Tempe, said on Friday that people who had been working out of the office shifted to houses and other “undisclosed locations.” News of the office’s closure was first reported by The Arizona Republic.“We’re not giving up,” Ms. Kuby said in an interview. “People are determined not to be stopped.”Gunshots were fired through the front door of an office used by the Tempe Democratic National Committee in suburban Phoenix.Ray Stern/The Republic/USA TODAY NETWORK, via Imagn ImagesThe office in Tempe, which is home to Arizona State University, had been a bustling hub for gathering volunteers and starting voter-outreach efforts, Ms. Kuby said. The shootings left its windows scarred by bullet holes.The three shootings all happened between midnight and 1 a.m. local time when the office was empty, according to the Tempe Police Department. A BB gun was used in the first incident, on Sept. 16, and a firearm was used in the second and third shootings, on Sept. 23 and Oct. 6, the police said. The Tempe police said investigators were still working to determine what kind of gun was used. The police have not made any arrests or identified a motive. This week, the police identified a silver Toyota Highlander with unknown license plates as a “suspect vehicle.”The Arizona Democratic Party did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday. More