Elections

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Étienne-Émile Baulieu, Father of the Abortion Pill, Is Dead at 98

      by

      Étienne-Émile Baulieu, the French biochemist and physician who was often called the father of the abortion pill — and who was also known for his pioneering studies on the role of steroid hormones in human reproduction and aging — died on Friday at his home in Paris. He was 98.His wife, Simone Harari Baulieu, confirmed the death on social media.Dr. Baulieu’s early research focused on hormones, notably DHEA, one of the key hormones in the adrenal gland, as well as groundbreaking work on estrogen and progesterone. But it was his development in the early 1980s of the synthetic steroid RU-486, or mifepristone, that thrust him onto the public stage.Unlike the morning-after pill, which is used after sex to delay ovulation, RU-486 works as a kind of “anti-hormone,” in Dr. Baulieu’s words, by blocking the uterus from receiving progesterone, thereby preventing a fertilized egg from implanting.Taking the drug with misoprostol, a drug that causes uterine contractions, essentially triggers a miscarriage, enabling women to terminate early pregnancies without surgery.The two-dose treatment has been proved safe and highly effective — with a success rate of about 95 percent — and is commonly used in many countries; in the United States, medication abortions accounted for more than 50 percent of all abortions in 2020. After the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, demand for the pills surged, and abortion opponents began seeking ways to ban the drug nationwide.Controversy over RU-486 began as soon as its release in the 1980s. Dr. Baulieu developed the drug in partnership with the French drug company Roussel-Uclaf, where he was an independent consultant.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

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      OPEC Plus Members Say They Will Fast-Track Oil Output

      by

      Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates see a chance to ratchet up production in July, the third consecutive month of accelerated increases.Eight members of the OPEC Plus oil cartel said Saturday that they planned to continue their accelerated increases in production in July, the third consecutive month.The group, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, said in a news release that it was acting “in view of a steady global economic outlook and current healthy market fundamentals.” They pegged the increase at 411,000 barrels a day, although analysts say the actual amount is likely to be less.The move, which was expected, indicates a marked shift in oil policy by Saudi Arabia, the de facto leader of the group.Until recently, the Saudis had kept output at what was for them an uncomfortably low level to bolster oil prices, even though other members of OPEC Plus had exceeded their cap. Saudi Arabia will gain the largest share of the combined increases — boosting its ceiling to about 9.5 million barrels a day.The Saudis and other OPEC Plus members like the United Arab Emirates had chafed because some members including Iraq and Kazakhstan had exceeded their ceilings. The Saudis are now sending a message that they will not restrain output if others don’t.A catalyst for the change, analysts say, is President Trump, who warmly courted Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, as a commercial and strategic partner.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

    • 75 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      What Does Ultra Wealth Look Like?

      by

      In HBO’s “Mountainhead,” the “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong uses subtle status symbols — and a secluded $65 million ski chalet — to convey hierarchy among the 0.001 percent.When Paul Eskenazi, the location manager for “Mountainhead,” a new film from the “Succession” showrunner Jesse Armstrong, set out to find a house to serve as the primary setting for this satire about a group of ultrarich tech bros, he needed a very specific kind of extravagance. In the same way that “Succession,” which Eskenazi also worked on, reveled in “quiet luxury,” “Mountainhead” needed its moneyed protagonists to be living large but without flamboyance. Its characters are too wealthy for mere McMansions, and not any private residence would do.Portraying how the ultrawealthy really live — with all their subtle signals and status cues — has become something of a specialty for Armstrong and Eskenazi. It’s about not just private jets and sprawling homes, but the quiet hierarchies within the top 1 percent. There’s a pecking order between the 0.01 percent and the 0.001 percent, the kind of distinction that insiders equate to owning a Gulfstream G450 versus a Gulfstream G700.From left, Cory Michael Smith, Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman and Ramy Youssef in “Mountainhead.”Courtesy of HBOWhen Eskenazi found a lavish, 21,000-square-foot ski chalet built into a hill of Deer Valley in Utah, he knew it was the right fit — not because it was so large and impressive, though it’s certainly both, but because its extravagance had a subtlety that made it almost understated.“There’s a kind of quiet wealthy embedded in that location that doesn’t necessarily scream at you. It reveals itself slowly,” Eskenazi said, pointing out that it has a private gondola with direct access to a nearby ski resort. “It’s not flashy, but it’s deeply exclusive — the kind of feature that signals a level of access and control money affords without ever needing to show off.”“Mountainhead” is a tightly wound satirical chamber drama about four rich friends in tech who gather for a weekend of carousing while the world is plunged into chaos. There’s Venis (Cory Michael Smith), the founder of a Twitter-like app whose new A.I. creator tools have triggered a tidal wave of online disinformation; Jeff (Ramy Youssef), whose content-moderation software holds the key to resolving global strife; Randall (Steve Carrell), an elder plutocrat with a philosophical bent; and Hugo (Jason Schwartzman), whose meager $500 million net worth has earned him the nickname “Soups,” for “soup kitchen.”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

    • 75 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      The Meaning of a Trump-Inspired Style

      by

      The Times’s chief fashion critic unravels the Trump-inspired style that has spread quickly across Washington.President Trump has changed a lot about Washington over the past four months, including how it looks.I’m not talking about the city’s architecture, although he has made clear his disdain for the brutalism of many federal buildings (an aesthetic that I’m personally quite fond of).I’m talking about the city’s style.Trump and his inner circle of aides and family members cannonballed into Washington’s ocean of understated suits and blouses with a bold and strikingly consistent approach to clothing, cosmetics and, well, personal enhancements. (Nothing points up its consistency so well as the occasional departure, like the T-shirts and blazers Elon Musk has worn to the Oval Office, including today.) If style is a way to send a message, and politics is largely a matter of communication, the maturation of a “MAGA style” in Trump’s second term is a development worth understanding.So I reached out to our reigning expert: Vanessa Friedman, The Times’s chief fashion critic, who has covered political image-making for years (and who, as it happens, writes an excellent newsletter). We discussed the language of Trumpist fashion, the way it has evolved since Trump’s first term and what it means for men as well as for women.OK, let’s start with some visual aids. Who, to you, really embodies the aesthetic of the people around President Trump?Why don’t we take a look?Clockwise from top left: Maansi Srivastava for The New York Times, Sarah Blesener for The New York Times, Doug Mills/The New York Times, Haiyun Jiang/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

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Pledges to Double Tariffs on Foreign Steel and Aluminum to 50%

      by

      President Trump made the announcement at a U.S. Steel factory outside Pittsburgh.President Trump said on Friday that he would double the tariffs he had levied on foreign steel and aluminum to 50 percent, a move that he claimed would further protect the industry.The announcement came as Mr. Trump traveled to a U.S. Steel factory outside Pittsburgh to hail a “planned partnership” that he helped broker between U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel, a corporate merger that he opposed last year as a presidential candidate. Although the details of the U.S. Steel deal are still murky — and Mr. Trump later admitted he had not yet seen or signed off on it — the president used the moment to cast himself as a champion of the embattled industry.Speaking to a crowd of steel workers, Mr. Trump claimed that foreign countries had been able to circumvent the 25 percent tariff he put in place this year. The higher tariffs would “even further secure the steel industry in the United States,” Mr. Trump said.It is not clear how much doubling the tariff rate would actually bolster the domestic steel sector, but the move gave Mr. Trump the opportunity to wield tariffs at a time when his other import taxes have proved vulnerable to legal challenges.In a post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump said that the tariffs would take effect on June 4 and that they would provide a “big jolt” to American steel and aluminum workers.Mr. Trump has in recent weeks announced large tariffs only to quickly reverse himself and pause them. Analysts suggested on Friday that Mr. Trump could be seeking new ways to gain leverage over trading partners as the pace of negotiations has proved to be painfully slow.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

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Blow to Biden-era Program Plunges Migrants Into Further Uncertainty

      by

      A Supreme Court ruling on Friday ended temporary humanitarian protections for hundreds of thousands of people. But it is unclear how quickly many could be deported.For thousands of migrants from some of the world’s most unstable countries, the last several months in United States have felt like a life-or-death legal roller coaster.And after a Supreme Court ruling on Friday in favor of a key piece of the Trump administration’s deportation effort, hundreds of thousands of migrants found themselves plunged once again into a well of uncertainty. They face the prospect that after being granted temporary permission to live in the United States, they will now be abruptly expelled and perhaps sent back to their perilous homelands.“One court said one thing, another court said another, and that just leaves us all very confused and worried,” said Frantzdy Jerome, a Haitian who lives with his partner and their toddler in Ohio.Immigration lawyers reported that they had been fielding calls from families asking whether they should continue to go to work or school. Their clients, they say, were given permission to live and work temporarily in the United States.Now, with that permission revoked while legal challenges work their way through lower courts, many immigrants fear that any encounter with the police or other government agencies could lead to deportation, according to lawyers and community leaders.“Sometimes I have thought of going to Canada, but I don’t have family there to receive me,” said Frantzdy Jerome, who came to the United States from Haiti and lives in Ohio.Maddie McGarvey for 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

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Officials Unveil Budget Cuts to Aid for Health, Housing and Research

      by

      The new blueprint shows that a vast array of education, health, housing and labor programs would be hit, including aid for college and cancer research.The Trump administration on Friday unveiled fuller details of its proposal to slash about $163 billion in federal spending next fiscal year, offering a more intricate glimpse into the vast array of education, health, housing and labor programs that would be hit by the deepest cuts.The many spending reductions throughout the roughly 1,220-page document and agency blueprints underscored President Trump’s desire to foster a vast transformation in Washington. His budget seeks to reduce the size of government and its reach into Americans lives, including services to the poor.The new proposal reaffirmed the president’s recommendation to set federal spending levels at their lowest in modern history, as the White House first sketched out in its initial submission to Congress transmitted in early May. But it offered new details about the ways in which Mr. Trump hoped to achieve the savings, and the many functions of government that could be affected as a result.The White House budget is not a matter of law. Ultimately, it is up to Congress to determine the budget, and in recent years it has routinely discarded many of the president’s proposals. Lawmakers are only starting to embark on the annual process, with government funding set to expire at the end of September.The updated budget reiterated the president’s pursuit of deep reductions for nearly every major federal agency, reserving its steepest cuts for foreign aid, medical research, tax enforcement and a slew of anti-poverty programs, including rental assistance. The White House restated its plan to seek a $33 billion cut at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, for example, and another $33 billion reduction at the Department of Health and Human Services.Targeting the Education Department, the president again put forward a roughly $12 billion cut, seeking to eliminate dozens of programs while unveiling new changes to Pell grants, which help low-income students pay for college.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

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Administration Ends Program Critical to Search for an H.I.V. Vaccine

      by

      The termination is the latest in a series of cuts to H.I.V. research and programs to prevent the disease.The Trump administration has dealt a sharp blow to work on H.I.V. vaccines, terminating a $258 million program whose work was instrumental to the search for a vaccine.Officials from the H.I.V. division of the National Institutes of Health delivered the news on Friday to the program’s two leaders, at Duke University and the Scripps Research Institute.Both teams were collaborating with numerous other research partners. The work was broadly applicable to a wide range of treatments for other illnesses, from Covid drugs to snake antivenom and therapies for autoimmune diseases.“The consortia for H.I.V./AIDS vaccine development and immunology was reviewed by N.I.H. leadership, which does not support it moving forward,” said a senior official at the agency who was not authorized to speak on the matter and asked not to be identified.“N.I.H. expects to be shifting its focus toward using currently available approaches to eliminate H.I.V./AIDS,” the official said.The program’s elimination is the latest in a series of cuts to H.I.V.-related initiatives, and to prevention of the disease in particular. Separately, the N.I.H. also paused funding for a clinical trial of an H.I.V. vaccine made by Moderna.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