Elections

The tax dispute, which was closely watched by experts, involved a one-time foreign income tax, but many saw it as a broader challenge to pre-emptively block Congress from passing a wealth tax.The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a tax on foreign income that helped finance the tax cuts President Donald J. Trump imposed in 2017 in a case that many experts had cautioned could undercut the nation’s tax system.The vote was 7 to 2, with Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh writing the majority opinion. He was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and the court’s three liberals. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote a concurring opinion, joined by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., and Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, joined by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch.The question before the justices appeared narrow at first glance: Is the tax in question allowed under the Constitution, which gives Congress limited powers of taxation?In the majority opinion, Justice Kavanaugh wrote that the tax fell within the authority of Congress under the Constitution.Many tax experts had warned that striking down the tax could have wide repercussions. Such a move could have threatened to fundamentally change how income is defined, block efforts to tax billionaires’ wealth and undermine enforcement for all sorts of other taxes, which amount to billions in revenue for the government.Among the defenders of the law was Paul Ryan, the Republican and former House speaker who helped write the legislation. Upending the tax, Mr. Ryan said, could endanger up to a third of the U.S. tax code. He joined the Biden administration and some other conservatives in seeking to keep the law intact.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

We can’t escape death. Horror offers a way to cope with this reality.This essay is part of a series called The Big Ideas, in which writers respond to a single question: What do we fear? You can read more by visiting The Big Ideas series page.I have to say, I’m not particularly confident in my own understanding of the true nature of fear, even though I make my living drawing horror manga. While there are many different types of horror — the abnormal mental states of psychological horror, the disturbing phenomena of occult horror, slasher horror, Gothic horror, science fiction horror, endless horrors — my efforts are mainly focused on the terror stirred up by the supernatural.I can give free rein to my creativity when I set out in pursuit of the abnormal and unusual, of things that only come into being when I put pen to paper and draw bizarre worlds full of ghosts, monsters, curses and supernatural abilities.My stories start from idle musings like “I’d hate it if this happened” or “it would be so scary if someone like this existed,” and from half-imagined images that provoke unease. I approach terror from the viewpoint of the senses, not from an academic perspective (I don’t have any expertise in the fields of psychology or pathology).A page from Junji Ito’s graphic novel “Smashed.” Confronting horror in books and films offers a way to prepare mentally for the unknown.Smashed: Junji Ito Selected Stories © JI Inc./Asahi Shimbun Publications Inc.The question “what do we fear?” is one we could ask not only of humans, but of living creatures in general. While I don’t know whether more primitive creatures experience anything we would call “emotion,” they nevertheless have an instinct for fear, which is key to staying alive. Thanks to fear, a creature steers clear of danger to live another day.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

BAM, which has faced cutbacks in recent years, unveiled a reorganization as it announced its Next Wave Festival for the fall.The Brooklyn Academy of Music, a haven for international artists and the avant-garde that has been forced to reduce its programming and lay off workers in recent years, unveiled plans for a reorganization on Thursday as it announced its fall season.The institution said that Amy Cassello, who has been with BAM for more than a decade, would officially become its artistic director, a position she had been holding on an interim basis. And it announced a new strategic plan that calls for programming more works that are still in development, establishing more partnerships with other presenting institutions and hiring a new community-focused “resident curator.”BAM executives said they hoped that the plan would help usher in a new era for the institution after an exceptionally difficult period.Like many nonprofit arts organizations, BAM has struggled financially since the pandemic, and its annual operating budget dropped. It has also been buffeted by leadership churn in recent years after decades of stability in its senior leadership ranks.“I’m feeling really confident about our future,” said Gina Duncan, BAM’s president since 2022. “We were able to gain alignment across all of BAM’s communities and really arrive at a point in which we had a shared understanding of our history and what the future holds for us.”The upcoming Next Wave Festival in the fall will have 11 events, up from eight in 2023, a difficult year when BAM laid off 13 percent of its staff to help fill what officials called a “sizable structural deficit.” But it will still not be as robust as it was in earlier eras, when the festival regularly staged many more programs.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

More than two dozen wildfires have ignited in California this week, and experts warn of an extreme season ahead.A burning landscape in Lebec, caused by the Post fire.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesThere’s no doubt about it: The 2024 wildfire season in California has begun.Propelled by dry and windy weather, more than two dozen fires have erupted across the state in the past week, including the two biggest blazes of the year so far — the Post fire northwest of Los Angeles and the Sites fire in Colusa County, northwest of Sacramento, which had grown to more than 19,000 acres as of Wednesday evening and was only 10 percent contained.“We have entered fire season unambiguously,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at U.C.L.A., said in an online briefing. “I think we’re going to see a greatly increased level of fire activity this year, compared to the last two years.”After two rainy winters in a row, there is more grass and vegetation than usual available to burn, Swain said. And though the land isn’t unusually parched yet, he said, it’s likely to become dangerously dry in the next few months, setting the stage for extreme and difficult-to-control fires.(Fire season is looking worrisome elsewhere in the West as well. Two wildfires in southern New Mexico were burning out of control Wednesday evening, scorching more than 23,000 acres and prompting the evacuation of thousands of people from their homes.)In California, 2022 and 2023 were mild fire years, for a welcome change. Wildland fires burned roughly 325,000 acres and damaged 70 buildings across the state in 2023; two years earlier, the acreage figure was nearly eight times as high — more than 2.5 million in all — and 3,500 structures were damaged.California was lucky last year, with an exceptionally wet winter followed by an unusually cool summer. Then the remnants of Hurricane Hilary dumped so much rain on Southern California in August that it effectively ended the fire season when it ordinarily would be peaking.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

Mark Rutte, the Netherlands’ prime minister, is expected to be elected as the head of the military alliance after Romania’s candidate dropped out.Mark Rutte, the departing prime minister of the Netherlands who has guided more than $3 billion in Dutch military support to Ukraine since 2022, on Thursday clinched the last assurance he needed to become NATO’s next secretary general.On Thursday, President Klaus Iohannis of Romania dropped his bid to lead NATO, making it all but certain that Mr. Rutte, 57, would be formally elected to a four-year term at the helm of the Atlantic alliance.That could take place as soon as next week, ahead of a high-level NATO summit in Washington in July. The Netherlands is a founding member, and Mr. Rutte would be the fourth Dutch official to become the organization’s top diplomat.Even if that happens, he would not immediately assume responsibility for the 32-nation alliance. Mr. Rutte, who has been the leader of the Netherlands since 2010, remains prime minister in the country’s transitional government, and a diplomat who requested anonymity in line with protocol, said the current NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, was for now expected to stay until his term ends in October.Mr. Rutte has increasingly echoed a main NATO message that supporting Ukraine in its defensive war against Russia is vital for preserving democracy and national sovereignty across the alliance.“This war is not simply about defending the freedom of the Ukrainian people; it is also about protecting the freedom and security of the Netherlands,” Mr. Rutte is quoted as saying at the top of his government’s website. “So we will not abandon those most in need.”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

Hours before the storm was expected to make landfall in Mexico, it brought heavy rain and coastal flooding to parts of eastern Mexico and southern Texas.Tropical Storm Alberto, the first named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, brought intense rain and coastal flooding to parts of Texas and northeastern Mexico on Wednesday, hours before it was expected to make landfall.Officials in Mexico were monitoring the levels of dams, rivers and streams and were also cleaning drainage points to prevent potential flooding.In Texas, officials warned of flooded roads in the Houston area early Wednesday afternoon. The tide was rushing beneath the elevated houses in some coastal cities, such as Surfside Beach, about 40 miles south of Galveston, by Wednesday morning. The city closed its beach earlier this week and warned visitors to stay away as the flooding worsened.The National Hurricane Center warned that Alberto was a large storm, with tropical-force winds extending about 415 miles north of its center in the Gulf of Mexico as it moved west toward northeastern Mexico. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 40 miles per hour, but the main concern was rainfall of a foot or more that was predicted for parts of Texas and Mexico. Tropical storm warnings were issued for coastal areas on both sides of the border.Forecasters predicted that Alberto could make landfall early Thursday near the Mexican city of Tampico, but its effects were expected to extend far beyond that.Mayor Gregg Bisso of Surfside Beach said that while the flooding was slowly easing there on Wednesday evening, the city was bracing for things to intensify at any moment, as they did when Hurricane Nicholas slammed into the city in 2021, causing major damage.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

Ella Dershowitz calls us by (some of) our names — or does she?Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesNote to readers: In the past, Wordplay indicated crossword clues with quotation marks. In crossword construction and editing, though, clues are typically indicated by brackets, a practice Wordplay will follow starting today.THURSDAY PUZZLE — I’ve noticed that as I get older, I have a harder time keeping large amounts of information in my head. That’s perfectly natural — I forget who told me that — but add in an attention deficit disorder and it feels as if my short-term memory works like a sieve. Some facts are retained, but other important things, like my children’s names, fall through the little holes to make room for new information.That is why I write almost everything down. Taking notes and making lists helps with crossword solving, too. Ella Dershowitz’s clever puzzle requires you to hold certain aspects of the theme in your head, so I recommend writing the elements down as you solve it. It made a lot more sense to me that way.And you’ll be happy to know that we’ve solved the family names issue: We all wear name tags.Our dog wears one, too.Wikipedia CommonsToday’s ThemeIn four rows of Ms. Dershowitz’s puzzle, there are two theme entries consisting of pairs of words or phrases, and there are three circled squares in each of those entries.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 public works minister said the power outage had been caused by the failure of a key transmission line. Within hours, power had begun to be restored to the nation of 18 million.Ecuador was plunged into a nationwide blackout on Wednesday afternoon, and the country’s public works minister blamed the emergency on the failure of a key transmission line.The minister, Roberto Luque, said in a statement on X that he had received a report from the national electricity operator, CENACE, about “a failure in the transmission line that caused a cascade disconnection, so there is no energy service nationwide.”He said the authorities were working to resolve the outage “as quickly as possible.” Within hours, power had begun to return to some parts of Quito, the capital.The South American country of 18 million people has been struggling with an energy crisis for several years. Failing infrastructure, a lack of maintenance and a dependence on imported energy have all contributed to rolling blackouts — though none have been as widespread as this one.Around 3:15 p.m. Wednesday, the majority of Ecuadoreans found themselves without power.Most of the country’s energy comes from neighboring Colombia, a nation that has struggled to generate enough power for its own domestic consumption.A $2.25 billion Chinese-built hydroelectric power plant, the Coca Codo Sinclair Dam, was supposed to help solve Ecuador’s problem. Located on the Coca River in the province of Napo, 62 miles east of Quito, it is the largest energy project in Ecuador.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