Elections

Juan Rivas, who threatened flight attendants with a champagne bottle and a plastic knife, tried to open an exit door of an American Airlines plane, prosecutors said.A California man who tried to intimidate flight attendants on an American Airlines flight using plastic silverware from a service cart and a glass champagne bottle, and then tried unsuccessfully to open an exit door and the cockpit, was sentenced on Wednesday to 19 months in prison.The man, Juan Remberto Rivas, 52, was arrested and charged with interfering with flight crew members on Feb. 13, 2022, after a flight from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Missouri.During the flight, Mr. Rivas, who, according to court records, admitted to using methamphetamines before the flight, began to panic and told flight attendants that the plane was not moving and that his family was in danger, court records said.His behavior led to a physical struggle that forced the plane to make an emergency landing in Kansas City, Mo.Mr. Rivas, who pleaded guilty in January, had faced a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison but prosecutors sought a sentence of 41 to 51 months despite him threatening to “bring down the plane,” court records and the attorney’s office said.“The government believes that the defendant’s actions were reckless because of his use of methamphetamine, rather than an intentional effort to bring down the aircraft,” the prosecution, led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul S. Becker, argued in a sentencing memorandum.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 Justice Department and special counsel Robert Mueller investigated whether a Trump adviser was part of an Egyptian plan, never proven, to funnel $10 million to the 2016 Trump campaign.In the summer of 2017, as the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III was starting his investigation, his agents and prosecutors were chasing potentially explosive allegations about foreign influence over Donald J. Trump and his campaign.C.I.A. intelligence relayed to the special counsel’s office suggested that senior leaders of a foreign adversary had signed off on secretly funneling millions of dollars — with the help of a Trump campaign adviser acting as “a bag man” — to Mr. Trump in the final days of the 2016 election.Interviews and other evidence obtained by the special counsel’s office showed that indeed Mr. Trump had lent his campaign a similar amount of money in the final days of the race — and, after beating Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump immediately struck a far more favorable tone toward the country than his predecessors.The country in question, however, was not Russia. It was Egypt.Seven years after Mr. Mueller’s team dug in on those allegations, people familiar with the investigation acknowledged that while much of the country’s attention was focused on ties between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia, the most concrete lead Mr. Mueller’s team initially had about potential foreign influence over Mr. Trump involved Egypt. The people familiar with the inquiry discussed details of it on the condition of anonymity.While Mr. Mueller has often been criticized for not moving aggressively enough to investigate Mr. Trump’s personal and financial ties to Russia, his team took invasive steps to try to understand whether Mr. Trump or his campaign had received financial backing from Cairo.Mr. Trump’s foreign business ties and efforts by foreign interests and government to influence him have come under scrutiny again as he seeks to return to the White House. The little-known investigation into possible Egyptian influence shows both the intensity of past efforts to explore the issue and how they have fueled Mr. Trump’s long-running assertions that he has been subject to a “witch hunt.”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

Native American voters were key to helping Democrats clinch Arizona in 2020. Though they make up only about 5 percent of the state’s population, they tend to vote heavily Democratic, and their power at the ballot box is growing through grass roots efforts to register and turn out the Native vote. But in this election, […] More

Hear tracks by MJ Lenderman, Miranda Lambert, ASAP Rocky featuring Jessica Pratt and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Charli XCX featuring Billie Eilish, ‘Guess’In the slightly less than two months since its release, Charli XCX’s sixth album, “Brat,” has transformed from a clubby cult classic into a mainstream phenomenon, fueled by a sense of cool so elusive yet galactically powerful that a CNN panel recently convened to discuss, with magnificent awkwardness, its potential impact on the presidential election. Strange times indeed. Luckily, Charli is still keeping it light, not allowing the new patina of Importance to cloud the fact that “Brat Summer” is, above all things, about messy, hedonistic fun. So let’s just say that the latest “Brat”-era remix, the deliriously suggestive “Guess,” is unlikely to appear in an upcoming Kamala Harris campaign ad.“You wanna guess the color of my underwear,” Charli winks atop an electroclash beat produced by the indie-sleaze revivalist the Dare, who interpolates Daft Punk’s 2005 single “Technologic”; Dylan Brady of 100 gecs also has a writing credit. It’s an underground loft party crashed by a bona fide A-lister: Billie Eilish, making her first guest appearance on another artist’s song, purring a playfully flirtatious verse that ends, “Charli likes boys but she knows I’d hit it.” It’s refreshing to once again hear Eilish on a beat as dark and abrasive as those on her debut album, but she and her brother and collaborator Finneas know they are ultimately on Charli’s turf, reverently endorsing the trashy aesthetic and if-you-know-you-know humor of “Brat.” “You wanna guess if we’re serious about this song,” Charli intones at the end, as Eilish lets out a conspiratorial giggle. Against all odds, reports of Brat Summer’s death seem to have been slightly exaggerated. LINDSAY ZOLADZOkaidja Afroso, ‘Kasoa’Okaidja Afroso, from Ghana, sings about cycles of nature and human life in his childhood language, Gãdangmé, on his new album, “Àbòr Édiń.” But his music exults in modern technology and cultural fusions. The six-beat handclaps and bass riffs of “Kasoa” look toward Moroccan gnawa music, while the vocal harmonies exult in computerized multitracking. “There will be meetings and partings, and joys and sorrows,” he sings. “May we journey with ease, and hope to cross paths again in another lifetime.” JON PARELESWe 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

Stocks skidded on Friday, capping off a turbulent week for Wall Street, as investors were jolted by data showing that hiring slowed and unemployment rose in July.The spiking uncertainty about the economic outlook, and the question of whether the Federal Reserve has been too slow to raise interest rates, was evident across financial markets.The S&P 500 fell 2.4 percent within the hour after the jobs report was released, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 3 percent. Yields on government bonds, which are sensitive to expectations for the economy, dropped sharply, and oil prices were lower too.The U.S. economy added 114,000 jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis, much fewer than economists had expected and a significant drop from the average of 215,000 jobs added over the previous 12 months. The unemployment rate rose to 4.3 percent, the highest level since October 2021.“That all-important macro data we have been hammering for months is finally starting to turn in an ominous direction,” said Alex McGrath, chief investment officer at NorthEnd Private Wealth.Markets are now predicting a half a percent cut in interest rates at the Fed’s next meeting in September, up from the quarter-point cut investors had been anticipating as of Thursday, according to CME FedWatch. The two-year Treasury yield, which is also reflective of short-term interest rate expectations, fell 20 basis points, to 3.96 percent.This week had already been a rocky one for Wall Street. The Federal Reserve’s indication on Wednesday that it was moving closer to cutting interest rates in September prompted an accelerated market rally, and the S&P 500 rose 2 percent on comments by Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair.But the market sold off on Thursday, with the S&P 500 falling 1.4 percent, led lower by a drop in chip stocks and economic data suggesting the economy is cooling. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield — which underpins many other borrowing costs — also dropped below 4 percent on Thursday.All this comes as investors started reconsidering their appetite for big technology stocks last month and bought up shares of smaller companies, which are particularly sensitive to borrowing costs and stand to benefit from interest rate cuts. Also driving this shift is a rethink among investors about the potential for artificial intelligence to continue to drive gains at big companies like Microsoft, Nvidia and Alphabet, after shares of those businesses surged in the past year. More

Reversing decades of precedent, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in a Texas case that different minority groups cannot jointly claim that their votes have been diluted.A federal appeals court further narrowed the scope of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, ruling that members of separate minority groups cannot join together to claim that a political map has been drawn to dilute their voting power.The 12-to-6 ruling on Thursday by the full Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned almost four decades of legal precedent, as well as an earlier ruling by a three-judge panel of the same appeals court. It applies only in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, the three states where the court has jurisdiction, but the decision has national implications and may be appealed to the Supreme Court.The case involved districts for county commissioners in Galveston County, Texas, a community of about 350,000 people, where the last round of redistricting redrew a district in which Black and Hispanic voters together made up a majority of voters. The redrawn boundaries reduced their combined share of the district’s electorate to 38 percent, and a lawsuit claimed that doing so violated Section Two of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits drawing maps that dilute minority voting power.A lower court and the three-judge appellate panel both ruled that the new map was a clear violation of the law. But the full Fifth Circuit disagreed, saying that the law does not explicitly allow voters from more than one minority group to “combine forces” to claim their votes were diluted.The 12 judges in the majority were all appointed by Republican presidents. Five of the six dissenters were named by Democratic presidents. More

Jonathan Dekel-Chen, whose son Sagui is held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, said he left a meeting last week with President Biden more optimistic than he had felt in months that a deal to free his son could be close.But in the intervening days, a new crisis has unfolded with the assassinations of Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas’s political branch, and Fuad Shukr, a senior figure in Hezbollah. The negotiations, which already appeared to have reached an impasse, appear to have halted for now.Reached on Thursday, Mr. Dekel-Chen sounded far less hopeful as tensions spiked across the region. His son was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a community devastated by the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7; roughly 100 of its residents were either killed or taken hostage.“It seems like it will delay any possible resolution, cease-fire or hostage release,” said Mr. Dekel-Chen, referring to the assassination of Mr. Haniyeh, who played a key role in cease-fire talks. “It could very easily mean that revenge, retribution is taken against our loved ones.”In a speech on Wednesday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said the decision to press onward with the war effort, including by striking senior Hamas leaders, was bringing Israel closer to a deal to bring home the hostages. Some, particularly the families of the remaining hostages, appeared unconvinced.“I don’t see the straight line that goes from that assassination to the release of the hostages,” said Mr. Dekel-Chen.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 storm, which could become Tropical Storm Debby, is expected to bring significant amounts of rain to the coast.The governor of Florida declared a state of emergency on Thursday as a tropical system moved toward the Gulf of Mexico, threatening to bring heavy rain, gusty winds and the potential for flash flooding.Known currently as Invest 97L, the storm could become Debby if it organizes itself into an official tropical storm. (“Invest” is meteorological shorthand for “investigative area.”)The U.S. National Weather Service warned that heavy rains could cause areas of flash flooding across Florida, Cuba and the Bahamas through the weekend.Florida braces for what could be a ‘major disaster.’With heavy rainfall of at least 12 inches expected over the next seven days, Florida is bracing for the threat of flooding, along with gusty winds and erosion. On Thursday night, Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in more than 50 counties, which gives emergency managers the authority to allocate resources to respond to the fallout of the extreme weather.

Five-day precipitation forecast

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10+ inches

Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Notes:

 Values are shown only for the contiguous United States and are in inches of water or the equivalent amount of melted snow and ice.
By Zach Levitt, Bea Malsky, Martín González Gómez and Madison Dong

The order covers Orange County and Osceola County, and travel could be disrupted for the throngs of summer visitors who go to Orlando and the theme parks at Universal Studios Florida and Walt Disney World.Water tables in some areas are already saturated, the governor said, and the incoming rainfall “will cause significant river flooding that may last for several weeks.” The storm could damage “major interstates and roadways, bridges, airports, schools, hospitals, power grids and other critical infrastructure,” Mr. DeSantis said. It was expected to also cause widespread power outages from downed trees and power lines.The National Hurricane Center said that an aircraft would investigate the storm on Friday if needed, and it warned officials in Cuba and the Bahamas to monitor its progress.Specialists at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, which falls under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, tracking Hurricane Beryl in July.Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesWe 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