Elections

It was a fringe Republican campaign ad that could be ripe for parody on late-night television, ideal material for a skit on “Saturday Night Live” or the target of a monologue from a bewildered Jon Stewart. Except it was real, and it is hard to imagine how it could be further satirized.“In America, you can be anything you want,” Valentina Gomez, a 25-year-old Latino immigrant and real estate investor running in the G.O.P. primary for secretary of state in Missouri, says in the video as she jogs through a historic district of St. Louis to the uplifting beats of “The Show Goes On” by Lupe Fiasco.“So don’t be weak and gay. Stay hard,” she continues, emphasizing her statement with an expletive. The neighborhood where the video was filmed, Soulard, has a significant L.G.B.T. community.The campaign ad, which Ms. Gomez shared on her social media accounts, then transitions from the video of Ms. Gomez — wearing running shorts and a vest resembling body armor — to a still photo of the candidate in front of a truck and wearing a National Rifle Association hat, with an American flag at her side and a gun in each hand.The campaign ad, first posted on Sunday, has drawn condemnation and scrutiny online. Mr. Fiasco, who has condemned homophobia in the hip-hop scene, distanced himself from the video that featured one of his hit singles, saying in a statement that he was “currently taking action.” Jason Kander, a former Democratic secretary of state in Missouri and a former Army intelligence officer, mocked Ms. Gomez in a social media post on Tuesday.“So refreshing to see a female GOP candidate who never served in the military doing the whole veteran cosplay, stolen valor, bigotry as a substitute for strength routine as well as any man,” wrote Mr. Kander, who deployed to Afghanistan in 2006 and has since struggled with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.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 corruption trial of Senator Robert Menendez, a powerful New Jersey Democrat, spun into motion in Manhattan on Wednesday, with combative opening statements and an extraordinary claim by the defense.Speaking directly to the jury, a U.S. prosecutor asserted that Mr. Menendez “put his power up for sale,” trading favors involving Egypt and New Jersey businessmen for gold bars, cash and a Mercedes-Benz convertible. But it was a lawyer for Mr. Menendez who shook the courtroom awake, piling blame on the senator’s wife, Nadine Menendez.Mr. Menendez, 70, betrayed little emotion as he watched the opening statements from the courtroom, where he is facing some of the gravest charges ever leveled against a sitting U.S. senator. He has pleaded not guilty.He is being tried alongside two of the businessmen, Fred Daibes and Wael Hana. Prosecutors have also charged Ms. Menendez, but her trial was delayed until July for health reasons.Here are five takeaways from the senator’s third day on trial:The prosecution tried to keep it simple.Prosecutors have spun a dizzying set of accusations against Mr. Menendez, filing four rounds of charges that involve a halal meat monopoly, a Qatari sheikh and the inner workings of the U.S. government. All of it could easily confuse jurors.So laying out a road map for their case, they offered the panel a far simpler view: “This case is about a public official who put greed first,” said Lara Pomerantz, an assistant U.S. attorney. “A public official who put his own interests above the duty of the people, who put his power up for sale.”Who Are Key Players in the Menendez Case?Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, and his wife, Nadine Menendez, are accused of taking part in a wide-ranging, international bribery scheme that lasted five years. Take a closer look at central figures related to the case.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

He was the first Black officer to lead a Marine Corps infantry company into combat. He later became an Alabama state lawmaker and an assistant secretary of the Air Force.J. Gary Cooper, a two-star general and the first African American to lead a Marine infantry company in combat, who later became an Alabama state lawmaker, an assistant secretary of the Air Force and an ambassador to Jamaica, died on April 27 at his home in Mobile, Ala. He was 87.His death was confirmed by his daughter Joli Claire Cooper.Growing up in Alabama in the 1930s and ’40s, General Cooper overcame the harsh segregation of the Deep South to attain leadership roles in the military, corporate America and government, a sweeping arc that paralleled the paths of a generation of African Americans that pushed open doors during a time of profound racial change in the United States.General Cooper was raised in Mobile in a rarefied world: the Black upper class of the pre-civil rights era. His family owned an insurance company and a funeral home. But money did not insulate him from the strictures of Jim Crow and its long racist shadow.When his father tried to send him to an all-white Roman Catholic school, the local bishop barred him. When he returned to Mobile to run the family business after 12 years in the Marines, the Junior Chamber of Commerce rejected him as a member. And in 1973, when General Cooper went to the Mobile County Courthouse to obtain a marriage license, he was humiliated to find that Black couples were made to sign a “colored” register, separate from the one for white couples.His initial escape from the segregated city of his youth came in 1954 when he won a scholarship to Notre Dame, where he was one of only a handful of Black freshmen in a class of 1,500.“On campus there were no ‘colored’ or ‘white’ signs on the drinking fountains or bathroom doors,” General Cooper wrote in a reminiscence published in Notre Dame magazine in 2014. “I thought I had died and gone to heaven.”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

Rafael Grossi slipped into Moscow a few weeks ago to meet quietly with the man most Westerners never engage with these days: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.Mr. Grossi is the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, and his purpose was to warn Mr. Putin about the dangers of moving too fast to restart the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which has been occupied by Russian troops since soon after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.But as the two men talked, the conversation veered off into Mr. Putin’s declarations that he was open to a negotiated settlement to the war in Ukraine — but only if President Volodymyr Zelensky was prepared to give up nearly 20 percent of his country.A few weeks later, Mr. Grossi, an Argentine with a taste for Italian suits, was in Tehran, this time talking to the country’s foreign minister and the head of its civilian nuclear program. At a moment when senior Iranian officials are hinting that new confrontations with Israel may lead them to build a bomb, the Iranians signaled that they, too, were open to a negotiation — suspecting, just as Mr. Putin did, that Mr. Grossi would soon be reporting details of his conversation to the White House.In an era of new nuclear fears, Mr. Grossi suddenly finds himself at the center of two of the world’s most critical geopolitical standoffs. In Ukraine, one of the six nuclear reactors in the line of fire on the Dnipro River could be hit by artillery and spew radiation. And Iran is on the threshold of becoming a nuclear-armed state.“I am an inspector, not a mediator,” Mr. Grossi said in an interview this week. “But maybe, in some way, I can be useful around the edges.”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

At a rally in Wildwood, N.J., on Saturday, Donald Trump said that if he is re-elected, he will “immediately deport” any campus protesters who “come here from another country and try to bring jihadism or anti-Americanism or antisemitism.”Of course, Trump dwells in linguistic imprecision. What does “try to bring” mean? Are we using his definitions of jihadism, anti-Americanism and antisemitism? How would those sentiments be monitored? Would the deportations be extrajudicial? Would the deportations be only of student visa holders, or would it include green card holders?This campaign pledge — this threat — is not only unworkable; it’s ludicrous. But it’s a powerful bit of propaganda. It ties together Trump’s message of nativism and xenophobia with one of his fixations: an iron-fist approach to protests that challenge his beliefs or interests.Trump understands, intuitively, the power of crowds, and views it as a pressing threat when aligned against him.Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper has said Trump was furious about the protests in the summer of 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. In his memoir, Esper wrote that in one meeting, Trump asked, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” According to Esper, Trump believed that the protests made the country — and him — look weak.Trump has a thirst for authoritarianism because he conflates suppression with strength. In a 1990 interview with Playboy, Trump said this about the Chinese government’s response to the Tiananmen Square protests: “They were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.”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 French authorities have undertaken a “massive” mobilization of security forces since violent protests broke out over a constitutional amendment that changes voting rules in the South Pacific territory.Protesters burned cars and businesses in New Caledonia’s capital after France’s Parliament approved a change to the territory’s voting rules.Delphine Mayeur/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPresident Emmanuel Macron of France convened a crisis meeting on Wednesday and moved to declare a state of emergency in New Caledonia after deadly riots in the semiautonomous French Pacific territory that has long sought independence.The French authorities have undertaken what they called a “massive” mobilization of security forces since violent protests broke out in New Caledonia this week over a proposed amendment to the French Constitution that would change voting rules in the territory. A vote in France’s Parliament approving the amendment on Tuesday ignited riots overnight that left three people dead.Mr. Macron met Wednesday with his Defense and National Security Council about the situation, according to a statement from his office. It said he had expressed “strong emotion” over the deaths and gratitude to French security forces. It also said he had requested that a state of emergency be declared for the territory at the afternoon cabinet meeting.“All violence is intolerable and will be subject to a relentless response” to ensure that order is restored, the statement said, adding that Mr. Macron had welcomed appeals for calm from officials.France annexed New Caledonia, a smattering of islands with a population of about 270,000, in 1853. The prospect of independence has fueled decades of tensions in the territory.After armed conflict claimed dozens of lives there in the 1980s — an uprising known as “the Events” — the French government promised change. The territory has held three independence referendums since 2018; all have been voted down.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

And they’re increasingly common. Here’s what to know about the shared risk factors for these diseases.Heart disease, diabetes and kidney disease are among the most common chronic illnesses in the United States — and they’re all closely connected.Adults with diabetes are twice as likely to have heart disease or a stroke compared with those who don’t have diabetes. People with diabetes — Type 1 and Type 2 — are also at risk of developing kidney disease. And when the kidneys don’t work well, a person’s heart has to work even harder to pump blood to them, which can then lead to heart disease.The three illnesses overlap so much that last year the American Heart Association coined the term cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic syndrome to describe patients who have two or more of these diseases, or are at risk of developing them. A new study suggests that nearly 90 percent of American adults already show some early signs of these connected conditions.While only 15 percent of Americans meet the criteria for advanced stages of C.K.M. syndrome, meaning they have been diagnosed with diabetes, heart disease or kidney disease or are at high risk of developing them, the numbers are still “astronomically higher than expected” said Dr. Rahul Aggarwal, a cardiology fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and co-author of the study.The research suggests that people should pay attention to shared risk factors for these diseases early on — including excess body fat, uncontrolled blood sugar, high blood pressure and high cholesterol or triglyceride levels.A Dangerous CycleYour kidneys, heart and metabolic system (which helps process the food you eat into energy and maintains your blood sugar levels) work closely together. If something goes awry with one, it can lead to problems with the others.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 genuinely like each other,” Alex Yaroslavsky said of his ex-wife and co-parent, Liza Cooper. They even live in the same apartment building.In Unhitched, couples tell the stories of their relationships, from romance to vows to divorce to life afterward.Liza Cooper and Alex Yaroslavsky, both from New York City, met in their late 30s, in March 2007, through a dating app; they married about a year later. Both secular Jews, the two seemed compatible on paper, yet differences in their communication styles sometimes created conflict and ultimately brought an end to their marriage.But with patience, work and a sympathetic landlord, the two managed to become dear friends and co-parents after their divorce. They now live on different floors of the same Upper West Side apartment building.Dates of marriage June 15, 2008 to Dec. 13, 2018Age when married Ms. Cooper was 37; Mr. Yaroslavsky was 38. (They are now 53 and 54.)Current occupations She is an administrator in a hospital and a dating coach; he is an executive coach with his own company.Children One son, age 14.Where did they grow up? In 1980, Mr. Yaroslavsky, an only child, immigrated to the United States with his parents when he was 10. The family had lived in Lviv, which was then part of the Soviet Union and is now Ukraine. He quickly learned English.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