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      Inside the White House Scramble to Broker a Deal in Gaza

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      The flurry of actions underscores how fluid the situation in the region is as President Biden and his team try to ultimately end the war that has devastated Gaza.Over the course of a few hours, the news from the Middle East came into the White House Situation Room fast and furious.Israel orders 100,000 civilians out of Rafah in prelude to invasion.Hamas “accepts” cease-fire deal, potentially precluding invasion.Israel conducts strikes against Rafah, possibly opening invasion.The war-is-on-off-on-again developments on Monday left White House officials scrambling to track what was happening and what it all meant. At the end of the day, they came to believe, each of the moves signaled less than originally met the eye, but reflected efforts to gain leverage at the negotiating table with a clear resolution not yet in sight.In fact, Hamas did not “accept” a cease-fire deal so much as make a counteroffer to the proposal on the table previously blessed by the United States and Israel — a counteroffer that was not itself deemed acceptable but a sign of progress. At the same time, Israel’s strikes in Rafah evidently were not the start of the long-threatened major operation but targeted retaliation for Hamas rocket attacks that killed four Israeli soldiers over the weekend — and along with the warning to civilians, a way to increase pressure on Hamas negotiators.The flurry of actions underscored how fluid the situation in the region is as President Biden and his team try to broker a deal that they hope will ultimately end the war that has devastated Gaza, killed tens of thousands of combatants and civilians, inflamed the region and provoked unrest on American college campuses. Over the last few days, the talks went from high hopes that a deal was close, to a fresh impasse that seemed to leave them on the verge of collapse, to a renewed initiative by Hamas to get them back on track.“Biden is continuing all efforts to thread multiple needles at once,” said Mara Rudman, a former deputy Middle East special envoy under President Barack Obama who is now at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. The president is still warning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel that a “Rafah ground invasion is a terrible idea,” she said, while also “pressuring Hamas in every way possible to get hostages out and more humanitarian aid in.”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

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      Zendaya Makes Two Arrivals to the Met Gala Red Carpet

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      The first thing you need to know about the black taffeta Givenchy spring 1996 haute couture dress Zendaya wore to make a late (re)entrance at the Met Gala is that it was the second John Galliano design she wore for the event. The first was a custom Maison Margiela couture dress he created specifically for her, which she wore at the start of the evening.The second thing you need to know about that second Galliano dress is that she bought it.The third thing you need to know about the dress is that it was originally Look No. 8 of Mr. Galliano’s first Givenchy couture collection, back when the appointment of the upstart Brit at the venerable Parisian house had set all of French fashion into an affronted tizzy.And the last thing you need to know is that all those things, added together at a peak eyeball moment, amount to a major declaration of independence by Zendaya, and perhaps the next step in Mr. Galliano’s return to the bosom of fashion following the documentary “High & Low: John Galliano” and his much lauded January Maison Margiela couture show.For Zendaya, the look, which was designed the year she was born, nods to the evening’s dress code in being vintage, rare and, with its full skirt and laced-up bodice, recalls the aristocracy of the ancien régime. It also represents “an investment in herself,” said Rita Watnick, the founder of Lily et Cie, the vintage clothing dealer in Los Angeles who sold the dress to Zendaya and Law Roach, her “image architect.”“It says, ‘I am not an emissary for a brand,’” Ms. Watnick went on. “‘I am my own emissary.’” That’s quite a news bulletin at a party that has become, for many brands and celebrities, a quasi-advertising moment.As for Mr. Galliano, his dresses have reappeared on red carpets before, but never under quite as big a spotlight. (Zendaya also wore vintage Galliano — a look from his spring 1998 collection — to Anna Wintour’s pre-Met dinner.) And while he may not have been granted the retrospective exhibition that the Met was rumored to have considered, being worn by an extremely high-profile co-host of the party of the year may be the next best thing. More

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      ‘Naked’ Trend Hits Big at the Met Gala With Rita Ora, Doja Cat, Kylie Minogue and Others

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      What did the stars wear to the Met Gala on Monday night? In some cases, not much.The singer Rita Ora attended the event wearing multicolored strings of beads by Marni that cascaded down a sheer bodysuit. Doja Cat wore a white Vetements dress that looked like a clingy drenched T-shirt. A trompe l’oeil gown by Diesel superimposed an image of a naked torso atop Kylie Minogue’s real one.All were part of a red carpet trend toward sheer gowns, or, as The New York Times’s chief fashion critic, Vanessa Friedman, has called it: “naked dressing.” The typical parade of opaque dresses was usurped by delicate constructions of mesh, lace and beads that allowed risqué glimpses of skin.Nakedness on the red carpet may still scandalize, but it is time tested: Consider Rose McGowan’s backless mesh dress at the Video Music Awards in 1998, which she has described as a statement about reclaiming her body. On the Met Gala carpet this year, the approach seemed to catch on more than usual, even after barely-there clothing took over the spring 2023 runways in New York, London, Milan and Paris.Perhaps it had to do with the gala’s reputation for one-upmanship: What better way to distinguish oneself from hundreds of well-dressed competitors than to wear practically nothing at all? Or maybe it had to do with the evening’s dress code, “The Garden of Time,” which might have gotten designers thinking about Adam and Eve.Whatever the motivation, the see-through gowns kept coming: on Greta Lee, in lacy Loewe; on Jennifer Lopez, in beaded peek-a-boo Schiaparelli; and on Elle Fanning, in translucent resin from Balmain.The model Emily Ratajkowski, who wore a backless Versace gown with beaded tendrils, said in an interview that she felt a certain confidence in her exposure.“It feels really natural on me,” she said. “Comfortable, truly.”Jessica Testa More

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      Officials Describe Pact Hamas Has Embraced as U.S.-Israel Proposal With Small Changes

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      The proposal for a hostage-prisoner exchange and cease-fire that Hamas said on Monday that it could accept has minor wording changes from the one that Israel and the United States had presented to the group recently, according to two officials familiar with the revised proposal.The officials said that the changes were made by Arab mediators in consultation with William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, and that the new version keeps a key phrase, the eventual enactment of a “sustainable calm,” wording that all sides had said earlier they could accept.The two officials said the response from Hamas was a serious one, and that it was now up to Israel to decide whether to enter into an agreement. The proposal, they said, calls for Hamas to free hostages — women, the elderly and those in need of medical treatment — in return for a 42-day cease-fire and the release of a much larger number of Palestinian prisoners. Israel had sought 33 hostages, but it is not clear how many women and elderly are still alive, and the first tranche could end up including remains.That would be the first of three phases of reciprocal actions from each side. In the second phase, the two sides would work toward reaching a “sustainable calm,” which would involve the release of more hostages, the officials said. Both officials acknowledged that the warring parties would likely clash over the definition of “sustainable calm.”One of the officials, in the Middle East, said that Hamas viewed the term as an end to the war, with Israel halting its military actions and withdrawing troops from Gaza. The officials said that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was expected to push back against that definition.One official said that the negotiating parties agreed to the term “sustainable calm” weeks ago, after Israel objected to any reference to a “permanent cease-fire.” Israeli officials have consistently said they oppose any agreement that explicitly calls for that or for an end to the war.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

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      A Master of ‘Subtle Dazzle’ and a Quiet Force in Downtown Dance

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      Carol Mullins, who has been lighting boundary-pushing shows at Danspace Project since the 1970s, will be honored at its 50th anniversary.Carol Mullins knows the secrets of St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery. She knows that it’s strangely colder by the crypt of Peter Stuyvesant, who had the first chapel built on the site, now in the East Village, in 1660. She knows which architectural features predate the fire that destroyed much of the late-18th-century building in 1978. She knows the location of the hidden trapdoor that leads to the rafters of the arch above the nave.“It’s a wonderland of wood,” she said recently. “It looks like an upturned boat in there.”Mullins, 85, knows all this because just before that fire, she started designing lighting for Danspace Project, which has been presenting performances in the church since 1974. In 1982, she became the resident lighting designer, a position she still holds.At Danspace’s 50th anniversary gala on Tuesday, Mullins will be among the honorees. It’s an acknowledgment of one of the under-sung troopers essential to dance in New York, especially the underfunded, boundary-pushing “downtown” kind that Danspace has fostered.When people ask her why she has stayed there so long, she replies that she’s still learning, “and there’s a new set of problems every couple weeks.”After so many years, St. Mark’s Church is a palimpsest of memories for Mullins. An early one involves the choreographer Ishmael Houston-Jones, whose work “Relatives” Mullins lit in 1982. For the end of the dance, during which Houston-Jones jumped as the lights faded, he told her to keep the lights up “as long as you like it.”“I thought it looked fabulous,” Mullins recalled. “So he’s dying out there, jumping and jumping. Since then, he occasionally jokes about my sense of timing.”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

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      Jeff Bezos, Doja Cat and Pamela Anderson Pregame the Met Gala

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      Designers, athletes and celebrities swapped stories on dress fittings and gala prep routines on the eve of fashion’s biggest party.On Sunday evening, the rapper Doja Cat swept into an upscale French restaurant in SoHo carrying a disposable Starbucks cup. She stashed it at the bar, and then made her way to the rear of the room to kiss the actress Pamela Anderson on one makeup-free cheek.Ms. Anderson was hosting a party with the label Monse as a kind of amuse-bouche for the Met Gala the next night. About 100 designers, editors and models gathered at La Mercerie, the restaurant and home goods store, to greet one another with some version of the line: “I have such a busy day tomorrow.”Ms. Anderson planned to wake at 5 a.m. — a feat she said would not require an alarm clock — and then head to a park for a moment of peace before her first Met Gala. “I’m going to be walking all of those scary feelings out,” she said.Under the ceiling’s central arch, servers circulated trays of buttered radishes. Guests sipping Sancerre traded thoughts on increasingly elaborate gala prep routines. (Fillers came up, as did Ozempic.)Doja Cat said she would be sticking to “regular old beauty prep,” with the help of the makeup artist Pat McGrath.Clockwise from top left: Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos; Pamela Anderson; Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim; and Lizzo and Gabrielle Union.Amir Hamja/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

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      Nancy Pelosi, on Reforms to Reinforce Democracy

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      The former House speaker, responding to an Opinion essay, points to legislation pending in Congress.To the Editor:Re “The Constitution Won’t Save Us From Trump,” by Aziz Rana (Opinion guest essay, April 28):Mr. Rana makes a strong case for legislative solutions that will reinforce American democracy. To that end, many of the reforms he calls for were already passed by House Democrats in 2022.Our Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act would take these steps:1) Aim to stop voter suppression and election subversion.2) Establish a nationwide redistricting commission to end partisan gerrymandering.3) Empower the grass roots with matching funds for small-dollar donors.4) Curtail the harmful, anti-democracy Citizens United decision by enacting the Disclose Act, which curbs anonymous funders from suffocating the airwaves with misrepresentations.President Biden, a patriotic and determined champion for democracy, has been forceful in his support for these reforms. But shamefully, Senate Republicans are the final obstacle.When we retake the House, hold the Senate and re-elect Joe Biden in 2024, the filibuster must be pulled aside so this democracy-advancing legislation can become law.Doing so will enable us to pass important legislation to protect our planet from the fossil fuel industry and protect our children from the gun industry, to name a few examples where big dark money stands in the way of progress.It is our duty to empower the public, reduce cynicism in government and put people over politics.Nancy PelosiWashingtonThe writer is the former speaker of the House. More

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      How Many of These Novels Can You Guess Based on Very Simple Summaries?

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      Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s multiple-choice quiz designed to test your knowledge of books and literary culture. This week’s challenge asks you to identify five famous 20th-century novels based on a very simple one-sentence plot description.Just tap or click on the title you think is correct to see the answer and a snippet of the original coverage in The Times. After the last question, you’ll find links to the titles in case you’re looking for a something to read. More