Elections

For most teenagers, a presidential election year offers a dilemma. Elections have consequences, as the saying goes, and this is especially true for young people, who are at the center of any number of issues dividing the U.S. electorate. Yet most teens can’t vote.All spring and summer, the Headway team has been talking with high school students about this year’s election. Headway is an initiative at The New York Times that covers the world’s challenges through the lens of progress. Since the march of progress will have its longest effects on the youngest of us, that lens has made Headway especially interested in the experiences of the world’s youth.We have been especially curious about youth voter turnout this year, given how youth engagement in presidential elections has changed over the past few cycles. The 2020 election was particularly striking. The spread of the coronavirus meant that going to the voting booth was particularly fraught. The two contenders for the presidency were the oldest in American history. The 2016 election had notably low youth participation. On the eve of the 2020 election, The Times posed the question, “Why don’t young people vote, and what can be done about it?”But then young people defied expectations. According to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement at Tufts University, Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 voted at higher rates in 2020 than they had in any elections except 1992 and 1972 (which was right after the voting age was lowered to 18). Their votes last election far outstripped the margin of victory in swing states, making them critical to the outcome.In collaboration with Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news organization that covers education in several American communities, the Headway team has been posing questions about the election to high school students, and asking them what questions they have for their peers about the race. We’ve heard from nearly 1,000 students from red, blue and purple states, all representing diverse backgrounds and schools. Their responses have been illuminating. While some high schoolers don’t consider the election particularly relevant to their interests, many do. Even when they can’t vote, many teenagers in every part of the country are highly interested in the election. They are eager to inform themselves about it, craving more forums to discuss it with peers and others, and yearning to see their voices represented in the outcome.So for the next two months, if you’re a teenager in the United States, we want to ask you all about your experience of the election. Consider this your formal invitation to participate in what we’re calling the Headway Election Challenge.

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In an election-season document, Republicans are set to offer few new revelations but instead heap blame on the “Biden-Harris administration” while absolving former President Donald J. Trump.House Republicans are preparing to release an investigative report blaming the Biden administration for what they called the failures of the chaotic and deadly U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, laying out a scathing indictment that appeared timed to tarnish Vice President Kamala Harris in the final weeks before the presidential election.The roughly 350-page document set to be released on Monday is the product of a yearslong inquiry by Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. It accuses President Biden and his national security team of being so determined to pull out of Afghanistan that they flouted security warnings, refused to plan for an evacuation and lied to the American public throughout the withdrawal about the risks on the ground and missteps that led to the deaths of 13 U.S. service members.“The Biden-Harris administration prioritized the optics of the withdrawal over the security of U.S. personnel on the ground,” the report states. The document, a draft of which was reviewed by The New York Times, also contends that the administration’s mismanagement resulted in “exposing U.S. Defense Department and State Department personnel to lethal threats and emotional harm.”Details of the document were reported earlier on Sunday by CBS.The findings are largely a recitation of familiar lines of criticism against Mr. Biden, offering few new insights about what might have been done differently to avoid the Taliban’s swift march into Kabul and the disastrous U.S. evacuation operation in August 2021. But they come at a critical time in the presidential race, when Mr. Trump has been working to persuade voters that Ms. Harris is unfit to be the commander in chief.The authors single out Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, for particular condemnation, charging that he failed to coordinate a viable exit strategy and misrepresented the situation on the ground to the public.They absolve former President Donald J. Trump almost entirely of responsibility for the debacle, even though an inspector general found in 2022 that the deal his administration struck with the Taliban in 2020, known as the Doha Agreement, to orchestrate a rapid U.S. withdrawal, was a major factor in the crisis. The report instead faults Zalmay Khalilzad, then the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, for the shortcomings of that pact.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

On This Week’s Episode:Iowa has about three million people, and a million people attend the Iowa State Fair, all with their own goals and dreams for the event. In this episode, This American Life follows a handful of them to see if they get what they hope for.This American LifeNew York Times Audio is home to the “This American Life” archive. Download the app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. More

Tim D’Alfonso makes his New York Times debut.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesMONDAY PUZZLE — Last week was the beginning of the academic year for many. The months of learning ahead are neatly planned out. But where does that leave those us of who don’t go to school? What lessons can we expect to learn, aside from how to cope with fewer hours of daylight (a Himalayan salt lamp, I’ve heard)?My suggestion is to bring a bit of scholarly rigor to your daily Crossword habit. If you haven’t made it past the Wednesday puzzles yet, push yourself to try the Thursday and Friday ones through the end of 2024. If you have Monday solving down pat, test your personal best with time limits or speed runs. And if you’re just starting the New York Times Crossword, welcome! Monday puzzles are the place to begin, and today’s grid, by Tim D’Alfonso, can be a lovely introduction.Remember that these courses of action are neither graded nor pop-quizzed by anyone but you. Our columnists and puzzle editors hold de facto office hours in Wordplay and in the Easy Mode newsletter in case you have questions — and you can always ask your fellow classmates in the comments section for help.Today’s ThemeGray is the default color choice for highlighting specific themed squares in our crosswords, since it’s friendly to black-and-white print. Today, that choice happens to be essential to the theme: To [Make a subtle insult] (63A) is to THROW SHADE. If you look at the shaded areas in Mr. D’Alfonso’s grid, you’ll see that they contain synonyms for THROW.A [Beach project that rarely survives high tide] (18A) is a SANDCASTLE, the [Sandwich specialty of Maine] (56A) is a LOBSTER ROLL and so on. If the idiom for a [State of total happiness] (39A) is HOG HEAVEN, though, why aren’t we saying “All hogs go to heaven”? And while I accept that a [Numbskull] (23A) is a CHUCKLEHEAD, what’s the difference between that and a knucklehead? I welcome your insights, theories and observations on these matters.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

“People came from everywhere to see her shows,” an admirer said — including, on at least one occasion, the ballet superstar Mikhail Baryshnikov.María Benítez, an American dancer and choreographer who, as the founder of a popular Spanish dance troupe, played a major role in making New Mexico a hotbed for flamenco, died on Tuesday at her home in Santa Fe. She was 82.Her death was confirmed by her son, Francisco Benítez, who is her only immediate survivor and who did not specify a cause.Ms. Benítez was born in Minnesota, but she spent most of her childhood in Taos, N.M., where she began taking ballet classes at 10. At 18, she moved to Spain to study Spanish dance. There, in 1965, she met Cecilio Benítez, who was in charge of scenography and lighting at the Fontalba Theater in Madrid. They soon married, and she brought him back to her homeland, settling in New Mexico, where she started teaching and performing Spanish dance at El Nido, a bar in Santa Fe.The Benítezes formed a dance troupe, at first called the María Benítez Spanish Company and then later named the María Benítez Teatro Flamenco. In 1976, they moved to New York and began splitting their time between that city and Santa Fe. The company became the troupe in residence at the Lodge at Santa Fe and performed every summer in a cabaret theater that was modeled on the flamenco tablaos of Spain and was eventually named after her.“She helped make New Mexico a capital of flamenco, not just in the United States but on the global scale,” Nicolasa Chávez, who is the deputy state historian of New Mexico and the author of “The Spirit of Flamenco: From Spain to New Mexico” (2015), said in an interview. “People came from everywhere to see her shows” — including, Ms. Chávez recalled, the ballet superstar Mikhail Baryshnikov.Ms. Benítez and Ángel Muñoz in performance at the Joyce Theater in Manhattan in 1995. Ms. Benítez’s company, the María Benítez Teatro Flamenco, performed regularly at the Joyce in the 1980s and ’90s. Sara Krulwich/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

The New York City mayor, Eric Adams, compared himself to a biblical figure who endured suffering, telling parishioners that he was having a “Job moment.”After perhaps the most challenging week of his political career, Mayor Eric Adams visited two Black churches in Brooklyn on Sunday and compared himself to Job, a righteous biblical figure who endured immense suffering but whose blessings were ultimately restored.The mayor never directly addressed the several federal investigations swirling around his administration. Last week, authorities took the phones of his first deputy mayor, his schools chancellor, his deputy mayor for public safety, his police commissioner and his senior adviser.Yet he used his appearances at the Black churches — a friendly environment that the mayor has often used for political messaging — to liken the investigations to the burdens placed on Job.“Job lost it all, and even his wife questioned him. ‘Where’s your faith? Where’s God now?’ His friends rebuked him,” Mr. Adams said from the pulpit at Power and Authority Evangelical Ministry in East New York.“And I wish I could tell you that I had one moment in my life that was a Job moment. But I did not have one. I had many,” the mayor said.The visits to Changing Lives Christian Center and to Power and Authority Evangelical Ministry — just a few blocks apart in an election district where, in the 2021 Democratic primary, Mr. Adams won more than 76 percent of first-round votes — seemed designed to shore up support among his base.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

More from our inbox:Risky Covid Behavior‘Glorious’ Outdoor Dining in New York CityA Librarian’s FightDonald J. Trump, the first former American president to become a felon, is seeking to overturn his conviction and win back the White House.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Judge Pushes Sentencing of Trump to After Election” (front page, Sept. 7):I must disagree with the hand-wringing of my liberal colleagues who lament the fact that Donald Trump won’t be sentenced for his conviction in the hush-money case until after the election.Your article notes that the public will not know before they go to the polls “whether the Republican presidential nominee will eventually spend time behind bars.”With all due respect, so what? The former president was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Those who recoil at the idea of their president being a convicted felon won’t vote for him; those who support him will not change their minds based on the severity of the sentence.Other than being used as a talking point on the left (“he got four years in prison!!”) or on the right (“he got probation — I told you it was no big deal”), what could a sentence now possibly achieve?While no one, including Donald Trump, is above the law, this case is unique in our history. The sentence must be viewed as judicially sound, and for that it cannot become a partisan football, especially this close to an election.Eileen WestPleasantville, N.Y.To the Editor:Donald Trump’s lawyers have consistently maintained that his trials should not go forward because it may affect the 2024 election. Their many motions have contributed to delaying three of the four trials he faces. They have now persuaded Justice Juan Merchan in New York to put off sentencing in the fourth, justified by the judge because of the unique circumstances and timing surrounding the event.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 Allenby crossing, near the West Bank city of Jericho, has been the scene of violence in the past.A gunman killed three Israelis at a sensitive border crossing between Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Sunday, according to the Israeli military.The attack comes amid a surge of violence in the occupied territory since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel prompted the war in Gaza, and at a delicate moment for the relationship between Israel and neighboring Jordan.The gunman arrived at the Israeli-controlled part of the Allenby Bridge crossing from Jordan in a truck on Sunday and opened fire on Israeli security forces, the military said in a statement. The military did not identify the gunman, who was killed at the scene. The three victims were forklift operators who worked at the crossing, according to the Israel Airports Authority.The crossing, near the West Bank city of Jericho, is the main pathway for most Palestinians in the occupied territory to travel abroad, and it has served as an entry point for some aid being delivered to the war-ravaged Gaza Strip.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel described the gunman as “an abhorrent terrorist” and extended his condolences to the families of the victims.It was not immediately clear how the gunman managed to take a weapon into the Israeli-controlled part of the crossing. The Israel Airports Authority said in a statement that the Allenby Bridge was closed, as were two land crossings between Israel and Jordan.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