Elections

The vice president has been critical of past trade deals. But her record suggests she could push for trade measures that address environmental issues.In a 2019 presidential debate, Kamala Harris insisted, “I am not a protectionist Democrat.”But Ms. Harris is not a free-trade Democrat, either. She has said she would have opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1992, which President Biden voted for while serving in the Senate, as well as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an agreement supported by the Obama administration. And in 2020, she was one of only 10 senators to vote against the deal to replace NAFTA, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.As she pursues the presidential nomination, Ms. Harris’s views on trade and economic issues are likely to become a focal point. Yet unlike former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, trade has never been a major focus for Ms. Harris. As a result, her positions on trade issues are not entirely known.William A. Reinsch, the Scholl Chair in International Business at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, called Ms. Harris “a bit of a blank slate, but one most likely to be filled in with trade skepticism.”In part that is because of her no vote on the U.S.M.C.A., which Mr. Reinsch said “leads me to assume she is part of the progressive wing of the party which is skeptical of trade agreements in general, and particularly of those that involve market access.” But, he said, “there’s not a lot out there to go on.”Still, in her time as a senator from California and as the vice president, Ms. Harris has adopted some recurring positions that hint at what trade policy might look like if she wins the White House. For example, on several occasions, her objection to trade deals revolved around a common issue: their impact on the environment, and their lack of measures to address climate change.While the U.S.M.C.A. was negotiated by the Trump administration, it won over many Democrats by including tougher protections for workers and the environment. But Ms. Harris concluded that the deal’s environmental provisions were “insufficient — and by not addressing climate change, the U.S.M.C.A. fails to meet the crises of this moment.”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

A diverse cast of characters and a murder to solve each school year have helped make this teen drama one of Netflix’s longest-running original shows.Shooting the eighth and final season of Netflix’s teen crime drama “Elite” last November, crew members yelled “silencio” so often it could have been mistaken for a chant.Dozens of young actors, dressed in black tie, talked and laughed as they milled around a set on the outskirts of Madrid that depicted a nightclub. The Brazilian actor André Lamoglia seemed used to the chaos as he waited, perching on the bar in a black suit with white trim, to lead another of the show’s rowdy party scenes.After the cameras finally started rolling, and with the extras making much less noise, Lamoglia’s character, Iván, took a seemingly casual selfie with his half sister Chloe (Mirela Balic) that was actually part of a scheme to discover who murdered his friend.Unruly teenagers, expensive clothes and mysterious dead bodies are all typical for the Spanish-language show which, since its premiere in 2018, has become one of Netflix’s most popular original titles, and one of the longest-running. (The final season is being released Friday.)In its first season, “Elite” used a setup familiar from other successful teen shows, including “Gossip Girl” and “Beverly Hills, 90210”: inserting beautiful outsiders into an exclusive social setting. In this case, three scholarship students join Las Encinas, an expensive private high school. But at Las Encinas, every year (and season) there is also a murder for students and the police to investigate.This blending of soapy teen drama and tense murder mystery has helped the show run for eight seasons, and by its fourth, “Elite” was ranking in Netflix’s weekly Top 10 chart in more than 70 countries, according to data from the streamer.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 health facility’s potential closure had been contentious following the shuttering of other hospitals serving Lower Manhattan.The New York State Department of Health has agreed to allow a major hospital in Manhattan to close, which would leave many downtown residents farther away from emergency medical care.The fate of the hospital, Mount Sinai Beth Israel, has been up in the air since 2016, when its parent hospital system first announced a closure plan. The hospital survived for years, kept alive by community activists who filed lawsuits to keep it open, as well as by the coronavirus pandemic, which filled its beds with critically ill patients.Over the past year, however, the parent hospital system, Mount Sinai, renewed its push to close Beth Israel, claiming the facility was losing so much money that the losses threatened the entire hospital system, one of the city’s largest.On Thursday the State Health Department, which evaluates hospital closure proposals, said that it had approved Mount Sinai’s plan to close Beth Israel, with several conditions.The conditions are aimed at ensuring that nearby hospitals aren’t overwhelmed by the increase of patients expected after Beth Israel closes. The hospital, at 16th Street and First Avenue, treated just under 50,000 patients last year, and handles about 6 percent of all emergency room visits in Manhattan. Once it closes, many of those patients will most likely land at Bellevue or NYU Langone Health, two hospitals both several blocks up First Avenue from Beth Israel.The Health Department said Beth Israel must fund an expansion of the emergency room at Bellevue, the flagship of the city’s public hospital system. Another condition is that Beth Israel must run an urgent care center, open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for three months.The state’s decision removes a major hurdle standing in the way of Mount Sinai’s closure, but for the moment, the hospital must stay open: It still faces a lawsuit challenging the closing, and a judge has ordered the facility not to reduce its medical services in the meantime. But many doctors and nurses have left over the past year to find more secure jobs elsewhere. At times, care has suffered and patients have been rerouted to other hospitals because Beth Israel is no longer able to respond to strokes and some other medical emergencies.A spokesman for the Mount Sinai hospital system, Loren Riegelhaupt, said in a statement that Beth Israel would remain open and accept patients, for now.Beth Israel was founded in 1889, initially as a dispensary serving mainly Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side. It grew into a major Manhattan hospital, but has struggled in recent years.The past 20 years have seen the closure of two large nearby hospitals: Cabrini in the Gramercy Park neighborhood and St. Vincent’s in Greenwich Village.In a letter to the state health commissioner on Thursday, a longtime health activist, Mark Hannay, wrote that allowing the closure to go forward risked leaving “a dangerous gap in availability of emergency care in Lower Manhattan.” More

Thousands of people piled into Madison Square Garden on Thursday to hear Billy Joel glide from rock song to soulful blues in the final show of his long residency at the arena.Lori Umbrino saw her first Billy Joel concert at Shea Stadium in Queens in 1990. More than three decades later, she stood with her two children outside Madison Square Garden on Thursday evening, each wearing a T-shirt from the singer’s concerts across the years.“We’ve been there with him along the journey,” said Ms. Umbrino, 51, whose shirt was from Mr. Joel’s 100th concert at Madison Square Garden on July 18, 2018, designated Billy Joel Day in New York State.That journey has led them back to Madison Square Garden, where Mr. Joel was performing the 150th and final show of his 10-year residency there.The milestone — and, for some, the devastating misunderstanding that Mr. Joel was retiring — drew veterans of his shows, first-timers, families and singles from around the city and the country. Thousands of people piled into the Garden to hear Mr. Joel glide from rock song to soulful blues.Stuart Stephenson sat outside the arena at 34th Street and Eighth Avenue, blowing into his melodica, fingering the keys to play “New York State of Mind” and “Uptown Girl.” Fans and commuters streamed by, hawkers sold T-concert shirts, and drivers planted their hands on their horns.Mr. Stephenson saw a news segment on Thursday morning about Mr. Joel’s concert, and thinking the Piano Man was closing his Steinway for good, he rushed into Midtown.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

An accomplished Yale-educated lawyer, she has left her job at a top firm as she adjusts to the life of a high-profile political spouse.The night before the biggest assignment of her life, Usha Vance stayed up late with her husband, JD Vance. In their rooms at the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee, they went over each other’s speeches to the Republican National Convention. She gave notes on his, and he tweaked hers.In keeping with many intellectual and professional endeavors over the course of their relationship, which got its start at Yale Law School more than a decade ago, they approached the task as a couple.Their lives were about to undergo a dramatic change. Two days earlier, former President Donald J. Trump had announced the selection of Mr. Vance as his running mate on the Republican presidential ticket. Mr. Vance was used to the spotlight, having made his name as the best-selling author of the memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” years before he was elected to the United States Senate in 2022, but his wife had remained largely a private figure.Whatever nerves the self-possessed Mrs. Vance might have been feeling, she had allies bolstering her confidence. In the hours before she stepped onto the stage, a longtime friend texted her a trailer from “Bring It On,” the 2000 movie about highly competitive cheerleaders that was filmed in part at the high school she attended in San Diego.Standing on the stage of Fiserv Forum before an audience of more than 17,000, with millions more watching on television, Mrs. Vance delivered a speech that was direct and conversational, without the theatrical bluster employed by many of her fellow convention speakers.“When I was asked to introduce my husband, JD Vance, to all of you, I was at a loss,” she began. “What could I say that hasn’t already been said before? After all, the man was already the subject of a Ron Howard movie.”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 two men, Ismael Zambada García and Joaquín Guzmán López, run the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the most dominant criminal groups in Mexico. American law enforcement officials arrested two top leaders of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, one of the most dominant criminal organizations in Mexico, the Justice Department said on Thursday.The two operatives, Ismael Zambada García and Joaquín Guzmán López, are among the most powerful drug traffickers in Mexico and command massive transnational cocaine and fentanyl businesses that move narcotics into the United States, Europe and elsewhere. The Sinaloa Cartel they help lead is one of the two biggest drug trafficking groups in Mexico, and is among the most sophisticated and dangerous criminal enterprises in the world. Both men were in custody in El Paso, Texas. “Fentanyl is the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “The Justice Department will not rest until every single cartel leader, member, and associate responsible for poisoning our communities is held accountable.”Mr. Zambada García, 76, who is known as “El Mayo,” has been pursued by the U.S. government for years as a co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel and has been charged in several federal indictments stretching back more than two decades.Mr. Guzmán López is a son of the notorious crime boss Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo, and is said to have been elevated to a leadership role in the cartel along with his three other brothers after the extradition of his father to the United States in 2017. His brother Ovidio Guzmán López was arrested in Mexico and extradited to stand trial in Chicago in September.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 bureau is assessing what caused the former president’s wound during an assassination attempt. The question has turned political.The F.B.I. is examining numerous metal fragments found near the stage at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., to determine whether an assassin’s bullet — or potential debris — grazed former President Donald J. Trump’s head, bloodying his ear, according to the F.B.I. and a federal law enforcement official.The bureau has asked to interview Mr. Trump as part of its broader investigation, hoping to provide insights into the shooting and possibly a more complete record of his injury, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the continuing inquiry.Unanswered questions about the object that struck the Republican nominee for president have lingered since the shooting on July 13, with Mr. Trump claiming that he was struck by a bullet — and casting his survival as an act of divine intervention.F.B.I. officials have been more circumspect, citing the need to analyze the evidence before determining what struck Mr. Trump — a bullet, metal shard or something else.The bureau’s shooting reconstruction team “continues to examine evidence from the scene, including bullet fragments, and the investigation remains ongoing,” the F.B.I. said in a statement on Thursday. In addition to injuring Mr. Trump, the gunman, Thomas Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pa., shot three rally attendees, one fatally.Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, did not answer whether the bureau had asked to review the former president’s medical records after the incident, but Mr. Trump has not released them publicly.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

Andy Kravis returns after a two-year absence with a lively puzzle.Jump to: Tricky CluesFRIDAY PUZZLE — I’ve missed Andy Kravis: His most recent crossword in The New York Times was published a little more than two years ago.Maybe he has just been busy as an associate editor of puzzles and games at The New Yorker, but it’s nice to see his byline again. You can always count on Mr. Kravis to pack his puzzles with exciting fill and mind-bending clues.Let’s dig in.Tricky Clues1A. The coverage in the clue [Letters of coverage] is sunblock, and the letters we associate with sunblock are SPF. I also appreciate the pun on the phrase “letters of courage.”22A. I particularly enjoyed the clue [French buns] for DERRIÈRE, because I, like the puzzle editors, am 12 years old.36A. The [Jam session?] in this puzzle is not a musical one. It’s a SLAM-DUNK CONTEST, in which basketball players compete to see who can jam the ball into the basket within certain time constraints.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