Elections

An unapologetic champion of the newsworthiness of celebrities, he also drew attention to teenage pregnancy and helped popularize the term “baby boomer.”Landon Y. Jones, who was the top editor of People magazine in the 1990s, when its profits increased fourfold, and whose fascination with popular culture inspired him to write a 1980 book that helped popularize the term “baby boomer,” died on Aug. 17 in Plainsboro, N.J. He was 80.His son, Landon Jones III, said the cause of his death, in a hospital near Princeton, N.J., where he had lived for more than 50 years, was complications of myelofibrosis.An unapologetic champion of the newsworthiness of celebrities, Mr. Jones was perpetually eager to learn about the next famous person. As a writer for People, he interviewed a young Bill Gates in 1983 and brought along a colleague, one of the few he knew with a personal computer, to help him understand the Windows operating system.During his stint as People’s managing editor, the top editorial job, from 1989 to 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales, appeared on the cover dozens of times. Mr. Jones would say that People, a publication of Time Inc., was about the “three D’s”: Diana, diet and death, specifically that of celebrities.“There were other people at People who dreamed of being on the big book — on Time,” Jeff Jarvis, a colleague of Mr. Jones’s, said in an interview. “But I never sensed that Lanny was chagrined about being on People. It was the pathway that led to the things that fascinated him, like baby boomers and celebrity. He did it with pride.”During Mr. Jones’s tenure, People introduced color printing; moved its newsstand date from Monday to Friday to capture weekend supermarket sales traffic; and made women its primary target audience.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

Many in the Swiss city celebrated the announcement. But after a debate about the cost, a conservative party wants a referendum over whether the public should pay.Basel, a quaint riverside city in northern Switzerland, on Friday won the right to host next year’s Eurovision Song Contest, the high-camp international singing competition.To many Basel residents, the news, which Eurovision’s organizers announced in a release, was a cause for celebration: Next May, the city would have a moment in the international spotlight.Yet some lawmakers in Switzerland had an altogether different reaction. To them, Eurovision is not a fun spectacle; it is a waste of money and “a celebration of evil” that has no place in their country.Members of the Federal Democratic Union of Switzerland, a conservative Christian party, are campaigning for a referendum to stop Basel’s government contributing tens of millions of dollars toward Eurovision’s running costs.Samuel Kullmann, the lawmaker leading the campaign, said that Eurovision had a “cultural agenda” that threatened Christian values. That included, he added, allowing musicians to promote Satanism onstage.At this year’s Eurovision, Kullmann said, entrants included Bambie Thug, a heavy metal act representing Ireland, who sang standing in a pentagram. “People might say it’s metal or Gothic music, but they’re ignoring the obvious,” Kullmann said. “It was a celebration of evil.”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

Vice President Kamala Harris said on Thursday that she did not regret defending President Biden against claims that he had declined mentally, saying that she believes he has the “intelligence, the commitment and the judgment and disposition” Americans expect from their president.“No, not at all. Not at all,” the vice president said when asked if she regretted saying Mr. Biden was “extraordinarily strong” in the moments following the disastrous debate in June that led him to abandon his bid for re-election a month later.“He is so smart and loyal to the American people,” she said.In her first prime-time interview since Mr. Biden stepped aside and she became the new face of the Democratic Party, Ms. Harris continued to embrace the president and the record she has been a part of for almost four years. She told CNN’s Dana Bash that the administration’s efforts to help the economy recover after the pandemic and its push to secure the border are part of a record worth running on.But she talked about Mr. Biden mostly in the past tense — fondly, but with a kind of nostalgia that made it clear that he no longer represents the future of the country that she hopes to be leading in January.The challenge for her campaign over the next 67 days, top advisers say, is tricky: She must forge her own political identity separate from the president, who was pushed out amid voter concerns about his age and capacity to serve. But she can’t afford to break from his accomplishments, which remain popular, or to disrespect Mr. Biden, who remains a beloved figure among many in the party.“History is going to show,” she said, “not only has Joe Biden led an administration that has achieved those extraordinary successes, but the character of the man is one that he has been in his life and career, including as a president, quite selfless and puts the American people first.”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

Donald J. Trump has been reposting racially and sexually charged insults of Kamala Harris, continuing a history of crass attacks. But in Ms. Harris, he may have found a particularly risky target.Over his decades in the public eye, former President Donald J. Trump has a well-established history of making degrading and racist remarks about women, people of color and pretty much anyone else who crosses his path.It is a proclivity that dates to his days as a reality television star and that has only expanded in the meme-driven era of social media. In the words of Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota, Mr. Trump is “an equal opportunity offender.”But in Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Trump has found a particularly complicated and risky target for his trademark brand of transgression, as more Americans are suddenly tuning in to what has become a highly competitive race.Although there are no clear signs that Mr. Trump has increased the quantity of abuse he levels at his opponents, his decision to repost a string of sexually and racially charged broadsides in recent weeks suggests that he has turned up the dial when it comes to pure vulgarity and crudeness.That eagerness to offend is likely to receive increased scrutiny as the election enters its final stretch. With both major parties battling for female and moderate swing-state voters, Mr. Trump could potentially alienate an undecided audience uncomfortable with his coarse rhetoric.Since July 21, when President Biden stepped out of the race and endorsed Ms. Harris, Mr. Trump has directed a seemingly constant fusillade of invective at a challenger who happens to be Black, South Asian and female.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 long-shot request, which the former president made Thursday night, is an attempt to avoid sentencing in his criminal case, scheduled for Sept. 18.Former President Donald J. Trump sought to move his Manhattan criminal case into federal court on Thursday, filing the unusual request three months after he was convicted in state court.The long-shot bid marks Mr. Trump’s latest effort to stave off his sentencing in state court in his hush-money trial, in which he was convicted of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal.He is scheduled to receive his punishment on Sept. 18, just seven weeks before Election Day, when he will square off against Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidency.“The ongoing proceedings will continue to cause direct and irreparable harm to President Trump — the leading candidate in the 2024 presidential election — and voters located far beyond Manhattan,” Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, wrote in the filing.Their filing came even as the Trump legal team is awaiting the result of a separate effort to postpone the sentencing; it opened a second front that could complicate the first.On Aug. 15, Mr. Trump asked the state court judge who presided over the trial, Juan M. Merchan, to delay the sentencing until after Election Day. Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued that they needed more time to challenge his conviction on the basis of a recent Supreme Court ruling granting presidents broad immunity for official acts.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 week after Democrats spent much of their national convention attacking him over his position on abortion rights and reproductive health, former President Donald J. Trump said on Thursday that he would require insurance companies or the federal government to pay for all costs associated with in vitro fertilization treatments if he is elected in November.Mr. Trump’s announcement — made in an NBC interview, a speech in Michigan and a town hall in Wisconsin — came with little detail about his proposal or how he might address its cost. For one cycle, the treatments can cost up to $20,000 or more. But he has been trying to rebrand himself to voters on reproductive access and abortion rights, issues that have cost Republicans at the ballot box.Mr. Trump, who often on the campaign trail has bragged about his role in appointing Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, last week on social media declared that his administration “will be great for women and their reproductive rights,” a phrase used by abortion-rights advocates.The post appeared to be an effort by Mr. Trump to cast himself as more of a political moderate on abortion, an issue that could hurt him in November.On Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign accused Mr. Trump of trying to run from his record on abortion access.“Trump lies as much if not more than he breathes, but voters aren’t stupid,” Sarafina Chitika, a spokeswoman for the Harris campaign, said in a statement. “Because Trump overturned Roe v. Wade, I.V.F. is already under attack and women’s freedoms have been ripped away in states across the country.”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

Vice President Kamala Harris’s interview on Thursday with Dana Bash of CNN is the first major unscripted moment of her young presidential campaign. But it isn’t her first encounter with Ms. Bash.The CNN political anchor has interviewed Ms. Harris on three occasions in the past few years. In those past meetings, Ms. Bash was a firm-but-fair interlocutor: sometimes granting Ms. Harris time to meander through lengthy answers, and sometimes pressing her, repeatedly, when the vice president equivocated on tough issues.It was Ms. Bash, in 2022, who elicited Ms. Harris’s memorably odd description of herself as “the daughter of a woman, and a granddaughter of a woman.” (The anchor was asking about the vice president’s reaction to the Supreme Court opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade.)In the same interview, Ms. Bash pushed Ms. Harris on the Biden administration’s plans to secure abortion rights in the wake of the ruling. The vice president declined to give a full-throated endorsement of the strategies floated by Ms. Bash, like challenging state laws or an executive action.“But what do you say to Democratic voters who argue, ‘Wait a minute, we worked really hard to elect a Democratic president and vice president, a Democratic-led House, a Democratic-led Senate. Do it now,’” Ms. Bash asked.“But do what now?” Ms. Harris replied.A 2021 interview at the White House, conducted at a distance because of pandemic protocols, appeared less tense. Ms. Bash asked Ms. Harris about being the first Black and Indian person to serve as vice president — “How is that bringing itself to bear in the White House?” — and seemed to agree with Ms. Harris’s contention that Congress should act to restrict certain gun rights.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

Colin Adams opens our solving weekend.Jump to: Tricky CluesFRIDAY PUZZLE — This is not a scientific theory by any means, but once in a while I become convinced that solving a puzzle allows me to tap into a constructor’s mind-set at the time the grid was made. The fill is usually what gives it away.Reading the constructor’s emotions via crossword puzzle is a lot like reading tea leaves in the sense that I am making this up as I go along. But since Colin Adams, the mastermind of today’s puzzle, said in his Constructor Notes that he had a worrisome time filling the southwest corner and 38D somehow wound up in that section, I’m willing to bet that it wasn’t an accident. That was Mr. Adams’s call for divine intervention.He needn’t have worried. Mr. Adams’s second puzzle in The New York Times (his debut was in February) is a fun and accessible grid with lively cluing. I’m looking forward to more from him.Tricky Clues22A. This clue, [Ones used to working from home?], is not talking about people with home offices, but about UMPS who work behind home plates.24A. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize that Mittens in [Mittens might fiddle with this one] didn’t refer to hand coverings, but to a cat by that name. Mittens likes to play with a CAT TOY.

I think there’s something wrong with your duck…Imgur.comWe 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