Elections

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, one of the most prominent progressives in the Democratic caucus, said late Monday that she stood behind President Biden.“I have spoken to the president over the weekend,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez told reporters outside the Capitol. “I have spoken with him extensively. He made clear then and he has made clear since that he is in this race. The matter is closed.”She highlighted his efforts on Monday to reiterate that message. “Joe Biden is our nominee,” she said. “He is not leaving this race, he is in this race, and I support him.”Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said that it was essential for Democrats to turn their focus back to former President Donald J. Trump and what he would do if elected again. She told Mr. Biden to “increasingly commit to the issues that are critically important to working people across this country” — like expanding Medicare and Social Security and making housing more affordable, she said.“What I think is critically important right now is that we focus on what it takes to win in November,” she said. “Because he is running against Donald Trump, who is a man with 34 felony convictions — that has committed 34 felony crimes. And not a single Republican has asked for Donald Trump to not be the nominee.”Members of Congress returned to Washington on Monday after a recess, and Democrats have been meeting and discussing their path forward.While a handful of House Democrats have called for Mr. Biden to step aside since his debate performance last month, he has received politically important support from others, including members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus — and now at least one member of the so-called Squad, a group of progressives of which Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is a part. More

In a nationally broadcast interview on Monday, President Biden pushed back on rich Democrats who want him to end his re-election campaign, saying, “I don’t care what the millionaires think.”Small donors, he made clear, were coming through for him.But hours later, Mr. Biden joined a private call with his top donors and fund-raisers to reassure them. “It matters,” he told them of their support.The seemingly contradictory messages show the conundrum facing the president as he grapples with the fallout from his disastrous debate performance against former President Donald J. Trump last month. In order to continue to fund his presidential campaign, Mr. Biden will most likely need the support of wealthy Democratic Party backers, but they have been among the loudest voices calling for him to end his bid for re-election.In trying to diffuse their opposition, Mr. Biden — a politician who has long relied on the party’s establishment to fund his campaign — has adopted a surprisingly populist anti-elite message that, in some ways, echoes Mr. Trump’s.Major donors are warning that the party will lose the White House and down-ballot races with Mr. Biden atop the ticket. A growing chorus of donors has been pushing — first quietly, then publicly — for him to step aside to allow a replacement nominee and threatening to withhold their cash unless that happens.While Mr. Biden’s campaign has continued to court wealthy Democrats, including working to schedule fund-raising receptions despite uncertain interest, the president has also publicly cast the backlash from major donors as a sign that he is sticking up for regular people against moneyed interests. But polls showing that many rank-and-file Democratic voters also have deep concerns about his age.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

Donald Trump is expected to launch a new legal battle to suppress any damaging evidence from his 2020 election-subversion case from becoming public before the 2024 election, preparing to shut down the potency of any “mini-trials” where high-profile officials could testify against him.The plans come after the US supreme court last week in its ruling that broadly conferred immunity on former presidents opened the door for the US district judge Tanya Chutkan to hold evidentiary hearings – potentially with witnesses – to determine what acts in the indictment can survive.In the coming months, Trump’s lawyers are expected to argue that the judge can decide whether the conduct is immune based on legal arguments alone, negating the need for witnesses or multiple evidentiary hearings, the people said.If prosecutors with the special counsel Jack Smith press for witnesses such as former vice-president Mike Pence or White House officials to testify, Trump’s lawyers are expected to launch a flurry of executive privilege and other measures to block their appearances, the people said.The plans, which have not been previously reported, are aimed at having the triple effect of burying damaging testimony, making it harder for prosecutors to overcome the presumptive immunity for official acts, and injecting new delay into the case through protracted legal fights.Trump has already been enormously successful in delaying his criminal cases, including by succeeding in having the supreme court from taking the immunity appeal in the 2020 election subversion case in Washington, which was frozen while the court considered the matter.The delay strategy thus far has been aimed at pushing the cases until after the November election, in the hope that Trump would be re-elected and then appoint as attorney general a loyalist who would drop the charges.But now, even if Trump loses, his lawyers have coalesced on a legal strategy that could take months to resolve depending on how prosecutors choose to approach evidentiary hearings, adding to additional months of anticipated appeals over what Chutkan determines are official acts.A Trump spokesperson declined to comment on the legal strategy but claimed in a statement: “The entire January 6th case has always been just a desperate, un-constitutional attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election. The only thing imploding faster than the Biden campaign is Deranged Jack Smith’s partisan hoaxes.”View image in fullscreenTrump’s lawyers are not expected to make any moves until the start of August, the people said, when the case is finally returned to the jurisdiction of Chutkan after the conclusion of the supreme court’s 25-day waiting period and a further week for the judgement to formally be sent down.Once Chutkan regains control of the case, lawyers for Trump and for the special counsel have suggested privately that they think she will quickly rule on a number of motions that were briefed before the case was frozen when Trump filed his immunity appeal with the supreme court.That could include Trump’s pending motion to compel more discovery materials from prosecutors. If Chutkan grants the motion, Trump’s lawyers would insist on time to review the new materials before they started sorting through what acts in the indictment were immune, the people said.In the supreme court’s ruling on immunity, the justices laid out three categories for protection: core presidential functions that carry absolute immunity, official acts of the presidency that carry presumptive immunity, and unofficial acts that carry no immunity.Trump’s lawyers are expected to argue the maximalist position that they considered all of the charged conduct was Trump acting in his official capacity as president and therefore presumptively immune – and incumbent on prosecutors to prove otherwise, the people said.And Trump’s lawyers are expected to suggest that even though the supreme court contemplated evidentiary hearings to sort through the conduct, they are not necessary, and any disputes can be resolved purely on legal arguments, the people said.In doing so, Trump will try to foreclose witness testimony that could be politically damaging because it would cause evidence about his efforts to subvert the 2020 election that has polled poorly to be suppressed, and legally damaging because it could cause Chutkan to rule against Trump.Trump’s lawyers have privately suggested they expect at least some evidentiary hearings to take place, but they are also intent on challenging testimony from people like former vice president Mike Pence and other high-profile White House officials.For instance, if prosecutors try to call Pence or his chief of staff Marc Short to testify about meetings where Trump discussed stopping the January 6 certification, Trump would try to block that testimony by asserting executive privilege, and having Pence assert the speech or debate clause protection.Trump’s lawyers would argue to Chutkan that any privilege rulings during the investigation that forced them to testify to the grand jury were not binding and the factual record needed to be decided afresh.Meanwhile, witnesses such as former Trump lawyer John Eastman or former Trump campaign official Mike Roman would almost certainly be precluded from testifying because they have valid fifth amendment concerns of self-incrimination, as they have been separately charged with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results in Fulton county, Georgia. 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In a closing statement, a prosecutor said the Menendez home was awash in cash and walked jurors through what the government has called a complicated web of corruption.When F.B.I. agents raided the New Jersey home of Senator Robert Menendez and his wife, they found envelope after envelope of cash, a federal prosecutor told a jury on Monday. Cash stuffed in bags, cash stuffed in the pockets of the senator’s jackets, cash stuffed in his boots. Gold bars worth thousands of dollars.The valuables were bribes that two businessmen paid to the couple in exchange for promises of official action by Mr. Menendez, the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the prosecutor, Paul M. Monteleoni, said.“It wasn’t enough for him to be one of the most powerful people in Washington,” Mr. Monteleoni told jurors. “It wasn’t enough for him to be entrusted by the public with the power to approve billions of dollars of U.S. military aid to foreign countries.”“No, Robert Menendez wanted all that power,” he added. “But he also wanted to use it to pile up riches for himself and his wife.”“So, Menendez sold the power of his office,” he said.The prosecutor’s closing statement came as the trial of Mr. Menendez, 70, and the two businessmen — Wael Hana and Fred Daibes — entered its ninth week in Federal District Court in Manhattan. Prosecutors say Mr. Hana and Mr. Daibes were enriched in the scheme and helped to funnel bribes to the senator and his wife, Nadine Menendez, 57.In exchange, the indictment says, Mr. Menendez steered aid and weapons to Egypt, used his political clout to help the government of Qatar, propped up Mr. Hana’s lucrative halal certification business monopoly and sought to disrupt several criminal investigations in New Jersey on behalf of Mr. Daibes, a real estate developer, and another ally, Jose Uribe, a former insurance broker.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

Officials warned that it could take days to restore electricity. The storm has prompted tornado warnings in East Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas.Tropical Storm Beryl ripped a path of destruction through the heart of Houston on Monday, transforming roads into rivers, killing at least four people and knocking out power for more than two million customers across Texas.The storm, which made landfall early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane, weakened as it passed over the city and continued its swirling march north.But its relatively modest official strength undersold its power, local authorities said. As it churned through Houston, officials warned people to stay inside and away from windows, “as though there was a tornado coming your way,” Lina Hidalgo, the top official in Harris County, which includes Houston, cautioned residents.The center passed just to the west of the city, meaning Houston received some of the worst of the storm as it spun counterclockwise.By Monday afternoon, officials were beginning to assess the destruction as residents emerged to find a landscape of downed power lines, damaged homes, fallen trees and rippling water along the streets. The city’s airports remained closed into the afternoon because of lingering strong winds.Houstonians have long been accustomed to power outages and strong weather. But Beryl, which began as an unusually powerful storm in the Caribbean, offered an ill omen, striking early in a hurricane season that has been predicted to be unusually active.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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Gary Larson and Amy Ensz weigh their options.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — In middle school, I had an English teacher who was exacting about our pronunciation of words. He became red-faced with exasperation whenever a friend of mine tried to say the word “horror” in class — she had a habit of collapsing the word into a single syllable, which the rest of us, for N.S.F.W. reasons, found deeply entertaining.An emphasis on clear pronunciation can be useful. It helps not to mince words while speaking publicly, for example, or when repeatedly begging an automated customer service line for a “REPRESENTATIVE!” But these prescriptive attitudes about language have no place in the New York Times Crossword, where puzzles’ themes regularly rely on alternate pronunciations or unexpected spellings.Expect to find such pronounced mischief in Gary Larson and Amy Ensz’s crossword, which features familiar pairings in verbal disguise. This is a Times debut for Ms. Ensz, and the eighth puzzle for Mr. Larson. Much like the pairs in their puzzle, they’ve accomplished something delightful together.Today’s ThemeThe pairs I alluded to are common expressions that solve question-marked clues at 17-, 26-, 45- and 61-Across. The question mark, for those unaware, indicates a witty twist on a clue.A [Sting operation at a senior center?] (17A) is a BOOMER BUST. Bizarre. But if we replace the -er with the slant homophone “or,” we get a phrase that’s more familiar: “boom or bust,” which refers to a situation whose outcome may be either prosperous or catastrophic. A [Mission for an F-16?] (26A) is a FIGHTER FLIGHT — alter it in the same way, and you’ll discover the human response to danger, FIGHT or FLIGHT.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 body of Yazmeen Williams, 31, had been found on a Manhattan curb, wrapped in a sleeping bag.A Manhattan street erupted in anger on Monday when a man in a wheelchair was taken into custody in the killing of a young woman, whose body had been found wrapped in a blue sleeping bag days before.At least 50 neighbors and family members of the woman, Yazmeen Williams, 31, swarmed the police officers who placed the man on a stretcher and whisked him out of an apartment building in the Straus Houses, a public housing development on East 28th Street near Second Avenue. Some got close enough to punch him in the face, grab his jeans and rip the back of his blue-and-yellow striped shirt. Officers and emergency service workers held out their arms to keep the crowd at bay.Some of the loudest screams were from Ms. Williams’s mother, Nicole Williams.“You killed my daughter! Please kill him!” she cried out.“She didn’t deserve that,” her mother said. “She was a good daughter. She was my best friend.”The man, who has not yet been named by the police, was considered a person of interest in the woman’s death on Monday but has not been charged. Neighbors said he and Yazmeen Williams were a couple, but the family said they were not familiar with him.On Friday, just before 5 p.m., officers responded to a report of a suspicious package outside an apartment building on East 27th Street in the Kips Bay neighborhood of Manhattan. When the police arrived, they discovered Ms. Williams’s body wrapped in a sleeping bag next to a pile of trash.The city’s medical examiner found that Ms. Williams had been shot in the head, and her death was ruled a homicide, the police said.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