Elections

In The Villages, Florida’s retirement mecca, pro-Trump residents have been galvanized by a surprising showing of support for Kamala Harris.The golf carts lined up by the hundreds, festooned for Trump fandom: a teddy bear with orange hair and a red tie. A surprisingly realistic Trump mask. A Trump rubber duck. An inflatable Trump tube, depicting his mouth open and fists pumped in the air.On Saturday afternoon, The Villages, Florida’s retirement mecca, was abuzz with a parade for former President Donald J. Trump — even as Tropical Storm Debby menaced.The Villages is a sprawling planned retirement community northwest of Orlando and a solidly Republican stronghold.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“If Trump could take a bullet,” said Tommy Jamieson, the parade organizer, referring to last month’s assassination attempt, “then we can take a little rain.”The people of The Villages, a sprawling planned retirement community northwest of Orlando and a solidly Republican stronghold, know that they live in Trump Country. But a week earlier, supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, held a golf cart rally of their own, drawing widespread attention, to the chagrin of Trump-supporting Villagers.So Mr. Trump’s backers — with some donning T-shirts that read “I’m voting for the felon” and “I’m voting for the outlaw and the hillbilly,” referring to Mr. Trump’s running mate, JD Vance — set out to show them up.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 federal judge presiding over Donald Trump’s election subversion case in Washington DC rejected on Saturday a defense effort to dismiss the indictment on claims that the former president was prosecuted for vindictive and political purposes.Judge Tanya Chutkan’s ruling is the first substantive order since the case was returned to her Friday following a landmark US supreme court opinion in July that conferred broad immunity for former presidents and narrowed special counsel Jack Smith’s case against Trump.In their motion to dismiss the indictment, defense lawyers argued that Trump was mistreated because he was prosecuted even though others who have challenged election results have avoided criminal charges. Trump, the Republican nominee in the 2024 presidential race, also suggested that President Joe Biden and the US justice department launched a prosecution to prevent him from winning re-election.But Chutkan rejected both arguments, saying Trump was not charged simply for challenging election results – but instead for “knowingly making false statements in furtherance of criminal conspiracies and for obstruction of election certification proceedings”. She also said that his lawyers had misread news media articles that they had cited in arguing that the prosecution was political in nature.“After reviewing [the] defendant’s evidence and arguments, the court cannot conclude that he has carried his burden to establish either actual vindictiveness or the presumption of it, and so finds no basis for dismissing this case on those grounds,” Chutkan wrote in her order.Also Saturday, she scheduled a 16 August status conference to discuss next steps in the case.The four-count indictment, brought in August 2023, accuses Trump of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost to Biden through a variety of schemes, including by badgering his vice-president, Mike Pence, to block the formal certification of electoral votes.Trump’s lawyers argued that he was immune from prosecution as a former president, and the case has been on hold since December as his appeal worked its way through the courts.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe supreme court, in a 6-3 opinion, held that presidents enjoy absolute immunity for core constitutional duties and are presumptively immune from prosecution for all other official acts. The justices sent the case back to Chutkan to determine which acts alleged in the indictment can remain part of the prosecution and which must be discarded. More

How the Olympic drug testing system is supposed to function — and why it may not be working.When you sit down to watch the Olympics, you expect that you’re seeing the world’s best athletes competing on a level playing field.The organization that runs the Olympics prides itself on that promise, and it presents the Games as being tougher on dopers than any other sporting competition. It claims to have the most rigorous drug testing. Those who test positive face serious punishments, including multiyear bans. And an independent entity — known as the World Anti-Doping Agency — has global authority to enforce a strict antidoping code.But that system’s shortcomings have been on display at the Paris Games.Over the past few months, my Times colleagues and I have uncovered a troubling pattern of positive doping tests in the Chinese swimming program. Twelve members of the Chinese Olympic team tested positive in recent years for powerful performance-enhancing drugs but were cleared to keep competing. Until our stories, none of the positive tests had been publicly disclosed, as required by the rules.Concerns have spilled over to the pool deck in Paris, where some swimmers said the antidoping authorities had failed to ensure that these Games were fair. “I don’t really think they’ve given us enough evidence to support them with how this case was handled,” said Caeleb Dressel, one of the senior leaders on the U.S. team.In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain how the Olympic drug testing system is supposed to function, and why, in some of the most high-profile cases, like this one involving the Chinese swimmers, it may not be working. And now the Justice Department and F.B.I. are investigating.How it’s supposed to workEach country is in charge of policing its own athletes. That means that the United States Anti-Doping Agency takes the lead in testing and investigating American athletes, the China Anti-Doping Agency does the same in its country, and so on.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

Adrienne Hurst and Sophia Lanman and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeWhen Maggie Jones’s marriage collapsed after 23 years, she was devastated and overwhelmed. She was in her 50s, with two jobs, two teenage daughters and one dog. She didn’t consider dating. She had no time, no emotional energy. But then a year passed. One daughter was off at college, the other increasingly independent. After several more months went by, she started to feel a sliver of curiosity about what kind of men were out there and how it would feel to date again. The last time she dated was 25 years ago, and even then, she fell into relationships mostly with guys from high school, college, parties, work. Now every man she knew was either married, too young, too old or otherwise not a good fit.That meant online dating — the default mode not just for the young but also for people Ms. Jones’s age. Her only exposure had been watching her oldest daughter, home from college one summer, as she sat on her bed rapidly swiping through guy after guy — spending no more than a second or two on each.Ms. Jones tells her story of online dating in later adulthood, and what she learned.There are a lot of ways to listen to ‘The Daily.’ Here’s how.We want to hear from you. Tune in, and tell us what you think. Email us at [email protected]. Follow Michael Barbaro on X: @mikiebarb. And if you’re interested in advertising with The Daily, write to us at [email protected] production for The Sunday Read was contributed by Isabella Anderson, Anna Diamond, Sarah Diamond, Elena Hecht, Emma Kehlbeck, Tanya Pérez, Frannie Carr Toth and Krish Seenivasan. More

Scroll down for hints and conversation about the puzzle for Monday, Aug. 5, 2024.Good morning, dear connectors. Welcome to today’s Connections forum, where you can give and receive puzzle — and emotional — support.Be warned: This article includes hints and comments that may contain spoilers for today’s puzzle. Solve Connections first, or scroll at your own risk.Connections is released at midnight in your time zone. In order to accommodate all time zones, there will be two Connections Companions live every day, dated based on Eastern Standard Time.If you find yourself on the wrong companion, check the number of your puzzle, and go to this page to find the corresponding companion.Post your solve grid in the comments and see how your score compares with the editor’s rating, and one another’s.Today’s difficultyThe difficulty of each puzzle is determined by averaging the ratings provided by a panel of testers who are paid to solve each puzzle in advance to help us catch bugs, inconsistencies and other issues. A higher rating means the puzzle is more difficult.Today’s difficulty is 2.6 out of 5.Need a hint?In Connections, each category has a different difficulty level. Yellow is the simplest, and purple is the most difficult. Click or tap each level to reveal one of the words in that category. 🟨 StraightforwardMAKE DO🟩 ⬇️BIRTHDAY🟦 ⬇️CAPISCE🟪 TrickyCANDYFurther ReadingWant to give us feedback? Email us: [email protected] to go back to Connections?Want to learn more about how the game is made?Leave any thoughts you have in the comments! Please follow community guidelines:Be kind. Comments are moderated for civility.Having a technical issue? Use the Help button in the Settings menu of the Games app.Want to talk about Wordle or Spelling Bee? Check out Wordle Review and the Spelling Bee Forum.See our Tips and Tricks for more useful information on Connections.Join us here to solve Crosswords, The Mini, and other games by The New York Times. More

Richardson’s slow start put her behind, a position she had been able to overcome in the past. But not on Saturday, as she rarely matched Alfred’s speed during any part of the race. Women’s 100-meter final results 1 Alfred 10.72s 23.15mph 25.50mph 2 Richardson 10.87s 22.84mph 25.18mph 3 Jefferson 10.92s 22.64mph 25.03mph 4 Neita 10.96s […] More

Former President Donald J. Trump suggested without evidence on Saturday that Georgia’s Republican governor was hampering his efforts to win the battleground state in November, a claim that carried echoes of Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat to President Biden there in 2020.“In my opinion, they want us to lose,” Mr. Trump said, accusing the state’s governor, Brian Kemp, and its secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, who is also a Republican, of being disloyal and trying to make life difficult for him.At a rally at the Georgia State University Convocation Center in Atlanta, in a speech that lasted more than 90 minutes and that was peppered with grievances about his loss four years ago, Mr. Trump falsely claimed, “I won this state twice,” referring to the 2016 and 2020 elections.Mr. Trump lost to Mr. Biden by roughly 12,000 votes in Georgia in 2020. Last year, the former president was indicted by an Atlanta grand jury on charges related to his efforts to subvert the results of that election in that state. On Saturday, he complained that he might not have ended up in legal jeopardy if Mr. Kemp and Mr. Raffensperger had cooperated with his attempts to reverse the 2020 results.Mr. Trump added that he thought Georgia had slipped under Mr. Kemp’s leadership. “The state has gone to hell,” he said.Representatives for Mr. Kemp, who indicated in June that he had not voted for Mr. Trump in the Republican primary this year, and Mr. Raffensperger did not immediately respond to requests for comment.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

Debby was a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico late Saturday Eastern time, the National Hurricane Center said in its latest advisory. The tropical storm had sustained wind speeds of 45 miles per hour. Debby is the fourth named storm to form in the Atlantic in 2024.  All times on the map are Eastern. […] More