Elections

Mr. Schlossberg, 31, the only grandson of President John F. Kennedy, has courted attention with outlandish TikTok videos, many of them political.There is no shortage of pundits in the media class eager to help Americans understand the current political moment. Not many of them had over 100,000 followers on TikTok before starting their gig.Jack Schlossberg did.In his playful way, Mr. Schlossberg, 31, has captured the attention of his social-media-native audience. Whether that is because of his remarkable resemblance to his uncle, John F. Kennedy Jr., or because of his ability to distill complex Supreme Court rulings into bite-size videos, it’s hard to say.As one of the most prominent members of the Kennedy family, America’s most enduring political dynasty, Mr. Schlossberg has always borne some expectation of being involved in public life.“I am inspired by my family’s legacy of public service,” Mr. Schlossberg, who is the only grandson of President John F. Kennedy, recently told Vogue. “I take that very seriously, and I want to contribute in my own way. I have big dreams, but I also know that I’m trying to make a positive impact today.”This week, the magazine announced that Mr. Schlossberg would be a Vogue.com political correspondent. Through a publicist, Mr. Schlossberg declined to be interviewed for this article, as he was “currently focused on producing his content for Vogue,” suggesting that, despite describing himself as a “silly goose,” he is taking the role seriously.Chloe Malle, the editor of Vogue.com, said she saw his appointment as an opportunity to influence the magazine’s readers to vote.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

Joe Biden is still standing, refusing to bow out — he reiterated that once again in a lengthy and mostly successful news conference on Thursday night. Some may view it as selfish and irresponsible. Some may even see it as dangerous. But I see it as remarkable.Despite sending a clear message — in his recent flurry of interviews and rallies, in his stalwart address this week to members of the NATO alliance and in his letter on Monday to congressional Democrats, in which he assured them that “I wouldn’t be running again if I did not absolutely believe I was the best person to beat Donald Trump in 2024” — there’s still a slow drumbeat from luminaries, donors and elected officials trying to write Biden’s political obituary.The talent agency mogul Ari Emanuel (a brother of Rahm Emanuel, Biden’s ambassador to Japan), recently said Biden “is not the candidate anymore.” In a post on X, the best-selling author Stephen King said that it’s time for Biden “to announce he will not run for re-election.” Abigail Disney, an heiress to the Walt Disney fortune, said, “I intend to stop any contributions to the party unless and until they replace Biden at the top of the ticket.”They seem to believe that they can kill his candidacy, by a thousand cuts or by starving it to death.But none of this sits well with me.First, because Biden is, in fact, his party’s presumptive nominee. He won the primaries. He has the delegates. He got there via an open, organized and democratic process.Forcing him out, against his will, seems to me an invalidation of that process. And the apparent justification for this, that polls, which are highly fluctuant, now indicate that some voters want him replaced, is insufficient; responses to polls are not votes.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

Major telecom companies agreed to stop using critical components made by Chinese companies in their mobile infrastructure by 2029.The German government said on Thursday that it had reached an agreement with major telecom companies to have them stop using critical Huawei and ZTE components in their 5G mobile infrastructure in five years, the latest step by a European country to ban Chinese companies from critical telecommunications infrastructure.“We are protecting the central nervous system of the German economy — and we are protecting the communication of citizens, companies and the state,” Nancy Faeser, the interior minister, said in a news conference in Berlin on Thursday.The agreement with the telecom companies — Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Telefonica — comes in two steps. First, use of Chinese-made critical components will be discontinued from core parts of the country’s 5G networks by the end of 2026. Then, the parts made by Chinese manufacturers will be phased out from antennas, transmission lines and towers by the end of 2029.Huawei and ZTE did not respond to requests for comment.Germany, which accounts for roughly a quarter of mobile customers in the European Union , is highly dependent on the Chinese export market and has long delayed taking such a drastic step against Chinese firms. Instead it has chosen to certify components based on a case-by-case security check.Other European countries such as Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania have already instituted bans on Huawei and ZTE components. The United States has restricted the use of Huawei equipment since at least 2019.In presenting the arrangement, Ms. Faeser reiterated that it was based on negotiations with German telecom providers. Those providers had long argued that switching from Huawei and ZTE components too quickly would be complicated and expensive.The question of banning Huawei and ZTE from German mobile infrastructure has been discussed in Berlin since the previous government, headed by Angela Merkel, but the decision announced on Thursday comes after an extensive security assessment, said Ms. Faeser.“The current threat situation underlines the importance of a secure and resilient telecommunications infrastructure, especially in view of the dangers of sabotage and espionage,” she said.Adam Satariano More

Cases are rising across the United States. Here’s what to know about how symptoms of an infection can shift.By this point in the Covid-19 pandemic, most people have had at least one brush with the virus. Those of us who have been infected again (and again) may think we know the drill.But symptoms can vary from one infection to the next. The virus has felt like an entirely different illness each time I’ve tested positive: The first go-round, a fever flattened me. Once, I had barely any symptoms. The worst infection left me wrung-out on my couch, so exhausted I had to strain to pay attention to a podcast.“No two Covid infections really have behaved the same,” said Dr. Joseph Khabbaza, a pulmonary and critical care doctor at Cleveland Clinic.Generally speaking, the more immunity people build up from vaccination or infections, the milder symptoms of subsequent infections tend to be. But for an individual, there is no guarantee that a second infection will be less severe than the first.That’s partly because the virus has changed, developing into new variants. If you’re reinfected, that means the virus has evolved enough to slip past your immune defenses, said Dr. Davey Smith, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Diego.Many Covid symptoms have stayed the same since 2020: fever, sore throat, coughing. But some have shifted. It used to be common for people to lose their sense of taste and smell when they got sick, for example, but that now seems to happen less frequently. Early in the pandemic, Dr. Khabbaza said, patients would tell him that their Covid infections felt like nothing they had experienced before. Now, he said, people often think they have a cold, and are shocked when they test positive.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

Arthur, the former publisher of Knopf, is joining Hachette Book Group to start and run a new imprint.Reagan Arthur, the former publisher of Knopf, is joining Hachette Book Group to start and run a new imprint, Hachette said Thursday.Her appointment comes weeks after Arthur was let go from her position as publisher of Knopf, one of the most prestigious imprints at Penguin Random House, a move that surprised many in the publishing industry.At Hachette, Arthur will launch and oversee a new publishing line within Grand Central Publishing Group, and will also edit prominent authors at other imprints. Arthur’s own imprint, as yet unnamed, will release between four and six books a year.In an interview, Arthur said she envisioned her new imprint as a place to further develop the kinds of books she’s long published, putting out a selective list of literary and commercial fiction and narrative nonfiction.“I get to build something that will have a lot of care and focus,” she said. “I’m excited about bringing in new voices as well as writers that I’ve admired for a long time.”Arthur is known for her keen commercial instincts. Before moving to Knopf, she was the publisher of Little, Brown, a Hachette imprint, where she edited and published a string of best-selling and award-winning works, including books by Elin Hilderbrand, Michael Connelly, Malcolm Gladwell, James Patterson, Kate Atkinson, Eleanor Catton and David Sedaris.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

Born into slavery, Guillaume Lethière became one of France’s most decorated painters. For the first time, a major exhibition gives us the full view of his scenes of love and war.Liberté, égalité … and that third one, what is it again?On July 14, 1789 (exactly 235 years ago this Sunday), some idealistic Parisians stormed a not especially crowded prison. They overthrew the king’s guard. They set in train a three-pronged revolution: for individual liberty, for civil equality, and, last and rarest, for communal obligation. That July fraternity passed from the realm of genealogy into politics — and this July’s startling French legislative election, fought over race, migration and national belonging, confirms how agitated that third virtue remains. Who is my brother? In the National Assembly of 1789 and the National Assembly of 2024, some questions never get a final answer.Far from the Bastille, at the Clark Art Institute in the Berkshires, one of the most remarkable exhibitions I’ve seen in years punches right at the heart of today’s altercations over nationality and democracy, culture and politics, and what it means to be a citizen. Guillaume Lethière (1760—1832) was a Neoclassical painter of mixed race who has never, until now, been the subject of a solo museum show. Born in the French Caribbean, almost certainly into slavery, he reached the summits of artistic achievement in Paris and Rome. As rebellions and revolutions shook both France and the Caribbean, he painted massive history paintings of heroes in togas, and portraits of men and women from Europe and the Antilles. It was Lethière’s calling, in an era where no bonds seemed stable, to give form to fraternité.“Woman Leaning on a Portfolio,” circa 1799, oil on canvas, at the Clark. Our critic celebrates “the aloof precision of Lethière’s line” in this portrait, which pictures his stepdaughter clutching an artist’s papers. Richard Beaven for The New York TimesThis groundbreaking show was organized over five years by Esther Bell and Olivier Meslay of the Clark, along with Marie-Pierre Salé of the Musée du Louvre in Paris, where the exhibition will travel in November. Bell and Meslay have also edited an imposing 400-page catalog, bulky with contributions from leading scholars of French and Caribbean history. But “Guillaume Lethière” is not — this point is critical — a corrective exhibition, highlighting some marginal figure excluded from a white, European establishment. Lethière couldn’t have been more central to the Paris art world of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He ran one of the leading academies. He painted the empress Joséphine, a fellow Creole. Ingres drew him and his family. In a 1798 painting depicting France’s celebrity artists of that age of revolution, Lethière stands in the most prominent position, bathed in light.Even today, at the Louvre, he is hiding in plain sight. If you’ve ever fought through the throngs in the Italian painting wing, you may remember being spat out of the Mona Lisa gallery into a grand chamber with a concession selling magnets, mugs and other souvenirs. In all my years I never really looked up in that room — but right there, hanging above the Leonardo Rubik’s cubes and Eiffel Tower figurines, are two giant paintings by Lethière, two stentorian 25-footers of antique virtue and death. A consul orders his sons beheaded for betraying the Roman Republic. A centurion stabs his daughter to save her from enslavement.That’s our guy! As weighty as marble. As serious as the law. What you are going to see in this show is the cold beauty of Neoclassicism: a style predicated on Greek and Roman examples that found favor during the French Revolution, everywhere from painting and architecture to fashion and furniture design. Neoclassicism frowns on pleasure. It sneers at ornament. Its greatest exponent was Jacques-Louis David, the Jacobin artist/terrorist and Lethière’s great rival, who painted Roman history and myth as moral lessons for the new French republic.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