Elections

“The Devil’s Best Trick,” Randall Sullivan’s in-depth occult investigation, is not for the easily frightened.THE DEVIL’S BEST TRICK: How the Face of Evil Disappeared, by Randall SullivanWhen I was 12 years old, my family went on vacation and, at my request, left me behind. My mother told me that I could sleep in her and my stepdad’s bedroom — normally strictly off limits to kids — and watch their TV. The first night they were away, I made a horrifying mistake: “The Exorcist” was debuting on Canadian television. It came on around sunset. I turned on the TV and climbed into my parents’ bed. You know what happened next.I wanted to go turn off the TV, but I didn’t dare for fear of what might be waiting in the darkness. I tried hiding under the covers but that only made it worse. I don’t know when I fell asleep, but I do know that every time I closed my eyes I could see the ravaged, green, grinning face of Linda Blair. As Randall Sullivan would say, the face of evil.The Devil’s greatest trick, as the saying goes (attributed sometimes to Baudelaire and other times to “The Usual Suspects”), was to convince the world he doesn’t exist. Sullivan, an investigative journalist, goes out looking for him in our modern world. And “The Devil’s Best Trick” is a master class in the difficult art of first-person, narrative nonfiction.At the start of his journey, Sullivan’s not sure if he believes in the Devil; by the end he is certain that Satan is real. Sullivan is never showy, and doesn’t insert himself into the story more than necessary, but we always feel he is there with us — which is often comforting and necessary, given his sinister subject.The prose has wonderful momentum even when he’s writing about arcane debates in the early Christian church. Each chapter is a turn, a surprise. The writing is never clichéd, nor is the thinking. Sullivan knows a great lede, and he’s just as good with cliffhangers.He tells us that he cut quite a bit of the murder and torture material, but parents should still skip Chapters 9 and 10. When he says, of the serial murderer Westley Allan Dodd, “I’m not going to describe the things Dodd did next; they’re too horrible,” we are grateful; what he has included is very difficult to read.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

Films backed by the studio Neon have won Cannes and gone on to Oscar nominations regularly in the last few years. That’s one reason to keep an eye on “Anora.”Last year’s Cannes Film Festival was practically a one-stop shop for Oscar voters, premiering three major films — “Anatomy of a Fall,” “The Zone of Interest” and “Killers of the Flower Moon” — that would go on to be nominated for best picture.Does this year’s crop of Cannes movies have the same juice?At the 77th edition of the festival, which concluded Saturday, Sean Baker’s “Anora” was named the winner of the prestigious Palme d’Or. Three of the last four Palme winners went on to receive a best-picture nomination — “Anatomy of a Fall,” “Triangle of Sadness” and “Parasite” — and all of them, like “Anora,” were distributed by the studio Neon. That’s an astonishing streak that positions “Anora” in the best way possible, lending a veneer of prestige to Baker’s raucous comedy about a Brooklyn stripper who marries into Russian wealth.In 2018, Baker’s “The Florida Project” came awfully close to a best-picture nomination. If voters are more amenable to his indie sensibility this time around, expect robust campaigns for the lead Mikey Madison and for Baker’s script and direction. More of a long shot but equally worthy is supporting actor Mark Eydelshteyn as the live-wire heir our title character weds: Though Oscar voters rarely reward young men, this kid’s a total find, like a Russian Timothée Chalamet.Zoe Saldaña shared the best actress award at Cannes with three other female co-stars of “Emilia Pérez,” which is so much more than a musical.VixensIn a surprise move, the Cannes jury split the best actress award four ways, honoring the main female cast of the talked-about musical “Emilia Pérez.” That means the ensemble member Selena Gomez now has a Cannes trophy that has eluded the likes of Marion Cotillard, though I suspect more fruitful Oscar campaigns would be waged on behalf of the leading lady Zoe Saldaña, who’s never had a more robust role, and especially Karla Sofía Gascón, who could become the first trans actress to be nominated for an Oscar. (The fourth winner was Adriana Paz.)Netflix has picked up “Emilia Pérez” and will certainly give it a significant awards push, though the streamer’s stewardship could have drawbacks. It’s true that this is a hard-to-classify film — equal parts crime drama, trans empowerment narrative and full-blown movie musical — which would have made it a difficult theatrical sell. But some of its more outrageous moments are certain to be memed and mocked as soon as it makes its streaming debut, which could hobble the film’s reputation.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

Within about an hour, a Manhattan jury will begin a discussion of historic import: determining whether Donald J. Trump is guilty of 34 felonies.But before the jurors begin to deliberate, the judge, Juan M. Merchan, will deliver legal instructions that will help guide the 12 New Yorkers who will hash out Mr. Trump’s fate.Justice Merchan will describe the legal meaning of the word “intent” and the concept of the presumption of innocence. He will remind the jurors that they pledged to set any biases aside against the former president before they were sworn in, and that Mr. Trump’s decision not to testify cannot be held against him.Then, according to a person with knowledge of the instructions that Justice Merchan plans to deliver, he will explain the 34 charges of falsifying business records that Mr. Trump faces. It will likely be the most important guidance that the judge offers during the trial. And it is no simple task.In New York, falsifying records is a misdemeanor, unless the documents were faked to hide another crime. The other crime, prosecutors say, was Mr. Trump’s 2016 violation of state election law that prohibited conspiring to aid a political campaign using “unlawful means.”Those means, prosecutors argue, could include any of a menu of other crimes. And so each individual false-records charge that Mr. Trump faces contains within it multiple possible crimes that jurors must strive to understand.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

Source: Election results and race calls are from The Associated Press.Produced by Michael Andre, Camille Baker, Neil Berg, Michael Beswetherick, Matthew Bloch, Irineo Cabreros, Nate Cohn, Alastair Coote, Annie Daniel, Saurabh Datar, Leo Dominguez, Andrew Fischer, Martín González Gómez, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Jasmine C. Lee, Alex Lemonides, Ilana Marcus, Alicia Parlapiano, Elena Shao, Charlie Smart, Urvashi Uberoy, Isaac White and Christine Zhang. Additional reporting by Patrick Hays; production by Amanda Cordero and Jessica White.
Editing by Wilson Andrews, Lindsey Rogers Cook, William P. Davis, Amy Hughes, Ben Koski and Allison McCartney. Source: Election results and race calls are from The Associated Press. More

The speaker of the Texas House, Dade Phelan, won renomination in a runoff on Tuesday, surviving a bruising Republican primary challenge from a party activist and first-time candidate who was backed by former President Donald J. Trump and his Texas supporters.The race, in a southeast Texas district that includes part of the city of Beaumont, was a bitter political showdown among some of the most powerful players in Texas politics, and was likely to have been one of the most expensive ever for a Texas House seat.Millions poured in to the campaigns during the primary, including large donations from West Texas oil and gas billionaires and out-of-state school-choice advocates who backed the challenger, David Covey. For his part, Mr. Phelan had help from deep-pocketed donors like Miriam Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate and widow of the Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson.Mr. Covey, a technical adviser to the oil and gas industry who has described himself as a “very committed Christian and a conservative,” led Mr. Phelan in the first round of voting in March, when neither candidate won a majority.But during the runoff, Mr. Phelan rallied his supporters and campaign contributors, significantly out-raising his opponent through the middle of May.“We came this close,” Mr. Covey said in a speech to supporters in Orange, Texas. He added that even in defeat his campaign had started a movement.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

Surging exports and factory investment are buoying China’s output, but the housing market faces serious troubles and industrial policies may hurt other countries.Responding to China’s surging exports and extensive investments in new factories, the International Monetary Fund made sizable increases on Wednesday in how much it believes China’s economy will grow this year and next.The I.M.F. now estimates that China will grow 5 percent this year and 4.5 percent in 2025. That is 0.4 percentage points more for each year compared with the fund’s predictions just six weeks ago.China’s gross domestic output expanded 5.2 percent last year as the economy rebounded following nearly three years of stringent pandemic policies that included numerous municipal lockdowns and mandatory quarantines. Many economists, including at the I.M.F., had anticipated that growth would falter this year because of a severe contraction of China’s housing market and a slowdown in domestic spending.Yet while property prices continued to fall and retail sales grew sluggishly, China’s economy powered ahead instead in the first three months of this year, expanding at an annual rate of about 6.6 percent because of booming exports and strong factory investments.The Chinese government is taking steps to address the housing crash, but it faces enormous challenges. Years of overbuilding have resulted in four million new but unsold apartments and, by one conservative estimate, as many as 10 million that developers have sold but not finished building.Many owners of vacant apartments now find themselves facing years of hefty mortgage payments but little chance the apartments will appreciate significantly in value.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

Prosecutors introduced private messages between Senator Robert Menendez and his future wife to show what they say was the start of a bribery conspiracy.On Jan. 31, 2018, the day Senator Robert Menendez was formally cleared of bribery charges that had dogged him for nearly three years in New Jersey, he got a text from Nadine Arslanian, a woman he would soon begin to date and later marry.“Now re-election!!!!” Ms. Arslanian wrote.“Yes!” Mr. Menendez replied before asking, “Are you around on Friday?”She was. After a dinner date at a New Jersey restaurant, it was Ms. Arslanian’s turn to send a text with a question: “What is your international position?”Mr. Menendez, 70, responded that he was the “ranking member” on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — “which means senior Democrat.”The text exchanges, along with emails and recordings of voice mail messages and other exhibits, were part of hours of evidence that federal prosecutors presented on Tuesday, in the third week of Mr. Menendez’s corruption trial in Manhattan.Prosecutors used the volley of communications to begin to lay out an origin story of not only a romantic relationship but also what they claim was a burgeoning, five-year bribery conspiracy.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

Jeanne Breen makes her New York Times debut with a puzzle in collaboration with Jeff Chen.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesWEDNESDAY PUZZLE — Having spent the last few days in bed recovering from a bug — but enjoying Wordplay, thanks to my colleagues — I can attest to the restorative effects of leisurely distractions. I convalesced with a cocktail of old movies, crosswords and frantic trips to the patio to stare at my soon-to-be-thriving vegetable garden (the red kale is doing well, thank you). How lovely to be reminded, once back at my desk, that one of these wonderful distractions is, in fact, my day job.Today’s crossword was constructed by Jeanne Breen and Jeff Chen. The elixirs in their theme may not be the kind that doctors recommend for getting over a cold, but the joke that connected them all made me laugh — which really is the best medicine of all.Today’s ThemeBartenders who solve crosswords are finally having their day. The entries at 17-, 26-, and 36-/38-Across feature ingredient combinations for various cocktails, and our first job is to name them. Safe to say, this was not my forte: I can barely say “I’ll take a dry gin martini” without making it sound like a question. This is an example of why using your crossings — a skill we cover in our (beginner-friendly!) guide to solving crosswords — can make all the difference for a successful solve.“Vodka + coffee liqueur + Irish cream + heavy cream” make up a MUDSLIDE (17A). Combine “Light rum + dark rum + orange juice + passion fruit syrup,” and you’ve got a HURRICANE (26A). And if you light “rum + brandy + pineapple juice + orange juice + orgeat syrup” on fire — only for cocktail-making purposes, please — you get a FLAMING VOLCANO (36/38A).The names of these drinks imply danger — and that, dear reader, is what makes each clue a RECIPE FOR DISASTER (46/56A).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