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      Brazil’s Bolsonaro Blocked From Office for Election-Fraud Claims

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      Brazil’s electoral court banned former President Jair Bolsonaro from seeking office until 2030 for spreading false claims about the nation’s voting system.Brazilian election officials on Friday blocked former President Jair Bolsonaro from seeking public office until 2030, removing a top contender from the next presidential contest and dealing a significant blow to the country’s far-right movement.Brazil’s electoral court ruled that Mr. Bolsonaro had violated Brazil’s election laws when, less than three months ahead of last year’s vote, he called diplomats to the presidential palace and made baseless claims that the nation’s voting systems were likely to be rigged against him.Five of the court’s seven judges voted that Mr. Bolsonaro had abused his power as president when he convened the meeting with diplomats and broadcast it on state television.“This response will confirm our faith in the democracy,” said Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice who leads the electoral court, as he cast his vote against Mr. Bolsonaro.The decision is a sharp and swift rebuke of Mr. Bolsonaro and his effort to undermine Brazil’s elections. Just six months ago, Mr. Bolsonaro was president of one of the world’s largest democracies. Now his career as a politician is in jeopardy.Under the ruling, Mr. Bolsonaro, 68, will next be able to run for president in 2030, when he is 75. The next presidential election is scheduled for 2026.Mr. Bolsonaro said Friday that he was not surprised by the 5-to-2 decision because the court had always been against him. “Come on. We know that since I took office they said I was going to carry out a coup,” he told reporters (though he, too, had hinted at that possibility). “This is not democracy.”His lawyers had argued that his speech to diplomats was an “act of government” aimed at raising legitimate concerns about election security.Mr. Bolsonaro appeared to accept his fate, saying Friday that he would focus on campaigning for other right-wing candidates.Yet he is still expected to appeal the ruling to Brazil’s Supreme Court, though that body acted aggressively to rein in his power during his presidency. He has harshly attacked the high court for years, calling some justices “terrorists” and accusing them of trying to sway the vote against him.Judge Alexandre de Moraes, center, a member of Brazil’s Supreme Court, used the court to curb Mr. Bolsonaro’s power during his administration.Dado Galdieri for The New York TimesEven if an appeal is successful, Mr. Bolsonaro would face another 15 cases in the electoral court, including accusations that he improperly used public funds to influence the vote and that his campaign ran a coordinated misinformation campaign. Any of those cases could also block him from seeking the presidency.He is also linked to several criminal investigations, involving whether he provoked his supporters to storm Brazil’s halls of power on Jan. 8 and whether he was involved in a scheme to falsify his vaccine records. (Mr. Bolsonaro has declined the Covid-19 vaccine.) A conviction in any criminal case would also render him ineligible for office, in addition to carrying possible prison time.Mr. Bolsonaro was a shock to Brazil’s politics when he was elected president in 2018. A former Army captain and fringe far-right congressman, he rode a populist wave to the presidency on an anti-corruption campaign.His lone term was marked by controversy from the start, including a sharp rise in deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, a hands-off approach to the pandemic that left nearly 700,000 dead in Brazil and harsh attacks against the press, the judiciary and the left.Mr. Bolsonaro in 2017, when he was a member of congress.Lalo de Almeida for The New York TimesBut it was his repeated broadsides against Brazil’s voting systems that alarmed many Brazilians, as well as the international community, stoking worries that he might try to hold on to power if he lost last October’s election.Mr. Bolsonaro did lose by a slim margin and at first refused to concede. Under pressure from allies and rivals, he eventually agreed to a transition to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.Yet, after listening to Mr. Bolsonaro’s false claims for years, many Bolsonaro supporters remained convinced that Mr. Lula, a leftist, had stolen the election. On Jan. 8, a week after Mr. Lula took office, thousands of people stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court and presidential offices, hoping to induce the military to take over the government and restore Mr. Bolsonaro as president.Mr. Bolsonaro said on Friday that the riot was not an attempted coup, but instead “little old women and little old men, with Brazilian flags on their back and Bibles under their arms.”Since then, more evidence has emerged that at least some members of Mr. Bolsonaro’s inner circle were entertaining ideas of a coup. Brazil’s federal police found separate drafts of plans for Mr. Bolsonaro to hold on to power at the home of Mr. Bolsonaro’s justice minister and on the phone of his former assistant.Mr. Bolsonaro’s attacks on the voting system and the Jan. 8 riot in Brazil bore a striking resemblance to former president Donald J. Trump’s denials that he lost the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol.The aftermath of the riot at the Brazilian government complex in Brasília in January.Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesYet the result for the two former presidents has so far been different. While Mr. Bolsonaro has already been excluded from the next presidential race, Mr. Trump remains the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination. Mr. Trump could also still run for president even if he is convicted of any of the various criminal charges he faces.The ruling against Mr. Bolsonaro upends politics in Latin America’s largest nation. For years, he has pulled Brazil’s conservative movement further to the right with harsh rhetoric against rivals, skepticism of science, a love of guns and an embrace of the culture wars.He received 49.1 percent of the vote in the 2022 election, just 2.1 million votes behind Mr. Lula, in the nation’s closest presidential contest since it returned to democracy in 1985, following a military dictatorship.Yet conservative leaders in Brazil, with an eye toward Mr. Bolsonaro’s legal challenges, have started to move on, touting Tarcísio Gomes de Freitas, the right-wing governor of Brazil’s largest state, São Paulo, as the new standard-bearer of the right and a 2026 challenger to Mr. Lula.“He is a much more palatable candidate because he doesn’t have Bolsonaro’s liabilities and because he is making a move to the center,” said Marta Arretche, a political science professor at the University of São Paulo.The Brazilian press and pollsters have speculated that Mr. Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle, or two of his sons would run for president. Mr. Bolsonaro said recently that he told Ms. Bolsonaro she doesn’t have the necessary experience, “but she is an excellent campaigner.”Tarcísio Gomes de Freitas, the right-wing governor of São Paulo state, is emerging as a new standard-bearer of the Brazilian right.Adriano Machado/ReutersFriday’s decision is also further proof that Mr. Moraes, the head of the electoral court, has become one of Brazil’s most powerful men.During Mr. Bolsonaro’s administration, Mr. Moraes acted as the most effective check on the president’s power, leading investigations into Mr. Bolsonaro and his allies, jailing some of his supporters for what he viewed as threats against Brazil’s institutions and ordering tech companies to remove the accounts of many other right-wing voices.Those tactics raised concerns that he was abusing his power, and Mr. Bolsonaro and his supporters have called Mr. Moraes an authoritarian. On the left, he has been praised as the savior of Brazil’s democracy.Mr. Bolsonaro’s case before the electoral court stemmed from a 47-minute meeting on July 18 in which he called dozens of foreign diplomats to the presidential residence to present what he promised was evidence of fraud in past Brazilian elections.He made unfounded claims that Brazil’s voting machines changed ballots for him to other candidates in a previous election and that a 2018 hack of the electoral court’s computer network showed the vote could be rigged. But security experts have said the hackers could never gain access to the voting machines or change votes.The speech was broadcast on the Brazilian government’s television network and its social media channels. Some tech companies later took the video down because it spread election misinformation.As for Mr. Bolsonaro’s future plans? He told the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo that during the three months he spent in Florida this year after his election loss, he was offered a job as a “poster boy” for American businesses wanting to reach Brazilians.“I went to a hamburger joint and it filled with people,” he said. “But I don’t want to abandon my country.”Ana Ionova More

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      Republican Presidential Candidates Celebrate Student Loan Ruling

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      Much of the Republican field of presidential candidates was unanimous in praising the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to reject President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.Former President Donald J. Trump praised the ruling during an address to attendees at the Moms For Liberty conference in Philadelphia.“Today the Supreme Court also ruled that President Biden cannot wipe out hundred of billions, perhaps trillions of dollars in student loan debt, which would have been very unfair to the millions and millions of people who paid their debt through hard work and diligence, very unfair,” he said. He called Mr. Biden a “corrupt president” and lamented that the plan was “a way to buy votes.”Senator Tim Scott, Nikki Haley and former Vice President Mike Pence were among the first of the 2024 contenders to signal their alignment with the six conservative justices in supporting the decision.“The U.S. Supreme Court was right to end the illegal and immoral effort by the Biden Administration to transfer student debt to taxpayers,” Mr. Scott wrote on Twitter. “If you take out a loan, you pay it back.”He called on colleges and universities to “act to lower tuition and improve the quality of their programs” and vowed that as president, he would take action to make education more affordable and to expand access to vocational training.Mr. Pence sought credit for having “played a role in appointing three of the Justices that ensured today’s welcomed decision” — though he did not mention former President Donald J. Trump even as he highlighted one of the Trump administration’s signature achievements.“Joe Biden’s massive trillion-dollar student loan bailout subsidizes the education of elites on the backs of hardworking Americans,” Mr. Pence wrote on Twitter, “and it was an egregious violation of the Constitution for him to attempt to do so unilaterally with the stroke of the executive pen.”Ms. Haley was similarly critical, painting the president’s plan as unfair.“A president cannot just wave his hand and eliminate loans for students he favors, while leaving out all those who worked hard to pay back their loans or made other career choices,” Ms. Haley wrote on Twitter.In a speech Friday morning in Philadelphia, she heaped praise on the court: “Can I just say God bless the Supreme Court? They are righting a lot of wrongs.”Vivek Ramaswamy and Asa Hutchinson soon joined in as well, and while Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has not released an official statement, his campaign used the moment to highlight his higher education policies in Florida.In a video published by his campaign’s account on Twitter, Mr. DeSantis is seen on the campaign trail in South Carolina, promoting Florida’s rules on state school tuition rates and saying that colleges and universities “should be responsible for defaulted student loan debt.”“If you produce somebody that can’t pay it back,” he continues, “that’s on you.”Mr. Ramaswamy posted a two-and-a-half minute video to Twitter extolling the decision, citing its legal underpinnings as a “powerful precedent” that could target “most of the regulations of the administrative state.”Mr. Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, also commended the decision, stating that the “ruling reaffirms the importance of upholding our legal framework and preserving the checks and balances that ensure the proper functioning of our government.” He also called for finding a legislative solution to the student loan debt crisis.Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota added his voice to the chorus of praise for the decision later Friday afternoon: “Erasing the debt of high-paid, college-educated workers at the expense of blue-collar Americans is wrong, and would have exacerbated inflation significantly,” he said in a statement, adding that “the Constitution clearly states that spending originates in Congress.”Another Republican candidate, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, has not publicly commented on the decision.Anjali Huynh More

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      Biden Now Faces Student Borrowers Asking: What Now?

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      President Biden accused Supreme Court justices of having “misinterpreted the Constitution” and vowed on Friday to seek new ways to relieve the crushing weight of student debt after the court’s conservative majority rejected his $400 billion plan to forgive federal loans.Speaking from the White House after the court issued its 6-to-3 decision, Mr. Biden lashed out at Republicans who challenged his plan, saying they were willing to forgive loans for business owners during the pandemic, but not for Americans struggling with college debt.“The hypocrisy is stunning,” he said.The president suggested that the court had been influenced by “Republican elected officials and special interests” who opposed his plan, which would have forgiven up to $20,000 in debt for as many as 40 million people.“They said no, no,” Mr. Biden said of the justices, “literally snatching from the hands of millions of Americans thousands of dollars in debt relief that was about to change their lives.”The court’s finding that Mr. Biden’s loan plan exceeded his authority under the HEROES Act unraveled one of the president’s signature policy efforts and ratcheted up the pressure on him to find a new way to make good on a promise to a key constituency as the 2024 presidential campaign gets underway.Mr. Biden said he had directed his secretary of education to use a different law, the Higher Education Act of 1965, to provide some debt relief. But it was unclear whether that law could be used to provide widespread debt relief. And education officials said it would take months, at least, before regulations could be put in place to begin providing debt relief.Officials expressed confidence that the Higher Education Act provides authority for the secretary to broadly “settle and compromise” student loan debts.Chief Justice John Roberts, the author of Friday’s ruling, appeared to undercut that argument in his opinion, suggesting that the ability to relieve debt under the Higher Education Act was limited to the disabled, people who are bankrupt or who have been defrauded.But Mr. Biden said his administration will try anyway.“In my view, it’s the best path that remains,” Mr. Biden insisted.Mr. Biden said he had directed the Education Department not to report borrowers who miss student loan payments to credit rating agencies for 12 months. Payments are set to begin in the fall after being paused since the beginning of the pandemic.The department also has proposed changes to benefit borrowers on an income-based repayment plan. A draft of the changes released in January said they could reduce payments on undergraduate loans to 5 percent of discretionary income, limit the accumulation of unpaid interest and allow more low-income workers to qualify for zero-dollar payments.Mr. Biden spoke about student loan forgiveness in October in Dover, Del.Al Drago for The New York TimesThe ruling in the student loan lawsuit was the culmination of Republican efforts assailing a centerpiece of Mr. Biden’s broader agenda, as the president and his allies try to make the case to Americans for a second term in the White House.In nearly two and a half years, the president has faced significant opposition in Congress and the courts to promises he made as a candidate. He dropped efforts for free community college and preschool. He abandoned taxpayer funding for child care. The courts have blocked some of his most ambitious climate policies and delayed his efforts to control the border.Student debt relief was among the most costly relief programs Mr. Biden proposed in the wake of the pandemic. But unlike his successes in seeking congressional approval for infrastructure spending and chip manufacturing subsidies, the president used his own authority to forgive $400 billion in student loan debt. On Friday, the court said he went too far.More broadly, the court’s decision was the latest blow to presidential power, with the justices putting new limits on how much leeway the executive branch has when interpreting congressional statutes.That could have far-reaching implications. With Congress in political paralysis, recent presidents — including Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump — have increasingly turned to executive actions and orders to advance their policy goals.Courts have responded by delaying or overturning some of those actions. Mr. Obama’s efforts to provide protection from deportation for the parents of some immigrants never went into effect. Many of Mr. Trump’s executive actions were deemed excessive by judges.In the student loan case, the court said that Mr. Biden had stretched the law beyond reason.Unlike his successes in seeking congressional approval for infrastructure spending and chip manufacturing subsidies, the president used his own authority in seeking to forgive student debt. T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesWhen Mr. Biden announced last summer that his government would forgive up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt, student advocacy groups and many progressives cheered the move.“People can start finally to climb out from under that mountain of debt,” Mr. Biden said.His plan, which came after months of agonizing about whom it would benefit and whether it was too costly, would have been a centerpiece of his argument to voters that his economic agenda is designed to help low- and middle-income Americans blaze a path to greater prosperity.Instead, a majority of the justices agreed with critics who said the president’s debt relief plan went beyond the president’s authority under congressional legislation that allows changes to student loans during a public emergency.Within moments of the court ruling on Friday, it was clear that Mr. Biden would be under immense pressure from the left wing of the Democratic Party to respond swiftly and aggressively.Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic Senate leader who had pushed hard for student debt relief, demanded that Mr. Biden not give up.“I call upon the administration to do everything in its power to deliver for millions of working- and middle-class Americans struggling with student loan debt,” Mr. Schumer said.Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, went even further.“The president has the clear authority under the Higher Education Act of 1965 to cancel student debt,” Mr. Sanders wrote in a statement. “He must use this authority immediately.”For much of the last year, administration officials had refused to say whether they were working on a “Plan B” in the event the Supreme Court rejected the president’s plan.Even after several justices expressed deep skepticism during oral arguments earlier this year, Mr. Biden and his aides continued to insist that they had confidence in the legality of the debt relief plan and would not say whether they were working on an alternative.Millions of people with federal student loans are about to get another financial shock this fall, when the yearslong pause on repayment of existing loans ends.The federal government, under former President Donald J. Trump, imposed the pause on repayments at the beginning of the pandemic, as businesses closed and millions of people lost their jobs. Mr. Biden renewed the pause several times since taking office, but has said it will not be renewed again now that the pandemic has largely ended.Payments are set to resume in October, putting pressure on the debt holders that Mr. Biden’s forgiveness plan was designed to help.One question for Mr. Biden is whether those who are disappointed will blame him or the Supreme Court when they go to the ballot box next year.Mary-Pat Hector, the chief executive of Rise, a student advocacy organization that has pushed for student debt relief and college affordability, said many young Americans will blame Mr. Biden if he cannot deliver significant debt relief.“Many young people, particularly Gen Z, don’t like things that seem performative, and they believe in holding people accountable,” she said. “I think that we are going to see that reaction from a lot of people.” More

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      Republican Presidential Candidates Hail the Affirmative Action Decision

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      The Republicans running for president applauded the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday to strike down race-based affirmative action in college admissions, a policy that for decades has stoked the conservative agenda.Former President Donald J. Trump called the decision a “great day for America” in a statement.“People with extraordinary ability and everything else necessary for success, including future greatness for our country, are finally being rewarded,” he said, adding, “We’re going back to all merit-based — and that’s the way it should be!”Mr. Trump’s political organization, the MAGA War Room, cast him as a main catalyst for the court’s ruling to end affirmative action, saying on Twitter that “he delivered on his promise to appoint constitutional justices.”It also made an outlandish comparison between Mr. Trump, the Republican front-runner who has been indicted twice since leaving the White House, and Abraham Lincoln, one of the party’s iconic forebears.“President Trump will end affirmative action like Lincoln ended slavery,” the group wrote on Twitter.Mr. Trump appointed three of the six justices who voted to reject affirmative action at colleges, the same conservative supermajority that delivered another seismic victory for conservatives a year ago when it overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion.Mike Pence, Mr. Trump’s former vice president, who is now a 2024 rival, suggested in a statement on Thursday that he deserved a measure of credit for the court’s rightward shift and said that the “egregious” policy had “only served to perpetuate racism.”“I am honored to have played a role in appointing three of the justices that ensured today’s welcomed decision, and as president I will continue to appoint judges who will strictly apply the law rather than twisting it to serve woke and progressive ends,” he said.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Mr. Trump’s chief G.O.P. rival, also welcomed the court’s move.“College admissions should be based on merit and applicants should not be judged on their race or ethnicity,” he wrote on Twitter. “The Supreme Court has correctly upheld the Constitution and ended discrimination by colleges and universities.”Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is Black, said in a statement that race should not determine who gets certain opportunities.“We will not be judged solely by the color of our skin,” he said. “That’s what the ruling said today. But that is the story of America. That is a story of American progress, and we can all celebrate that today.”Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and onetime United Nations ambassador under Mr. Trump, said in a statement that the court’s ruling had reaffirmed how Americans value freedom and opportunity.“Picking winners and losers based on race is fundamentally wrong,” Ms. Haley said. “This decision will help every student — no matter their background — have a better opportunity to achieve the American Dream.”Vivek Ramaswamy, a multimillionaire entrepreneur who graduated from Harvard College, which was a defendant in the Supreme Court case, pledged to take further steps to end affirmative action. In a statement, he said would repeal a decades-old presidential executive order that requires federal contractors to adopt race-based hiring preferences.“I’m glad the U.S. Supreme Court finally laid to rest one of the worst failed experiments in American history: affirmative action,” he said. “Still, the ruling is likely to mark the beginning of a new era of ‘shadow’ racial balancing and quotas, where elite universities like Harvard and woke employers play games to suit their desires for preferences that benefit perceived ‘marginalized’ groups.” More

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      The Supreme Court’s Rejection of a Disputed Legal Theory on Elections

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      More from our inbox:Race and ClassDemand Tax Relief‘Make Reading Fun Again’The German Far Right Should Worry Us AllThe case will have no practical impact in the dispute that gave rise to it, involving North Carolina’s congressional voting map. The state has waged many battles over redistricting.Gerry Broome/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Court Rules State Control of U.S. Voting Has Limits” (front page, June 28):Several high-profile cases were decided by the Supreme Court this month, but only one, Moore v. Harper, had the potential to affect the very lifeblood of our democracy — voting. This election law case considered, in part, a controversial constitutional theory known as the “independent state legislature” doctrine.At issue was whether or not state legislatures had absolute power with no electoral oversight authority by state courts to regulate federal elections. With unchecked power, state legislators in key swing states could have rejected the voters’ slate of electors and appointed their handpicked substitutes.The Supreme Court has an obligation to protect our democracy. By rejecting the dangerous independent state legislature theory, the court safeguarded state-level judiciaries, shielding the will of the voters in the process.Jim PaladinoTampa, Fla.To the Editor:In the 6-to-3 Supreme Court ruling Tuesday in Moore v. Harper, the fact that a supermajority including both Democratic and Republican appointees reaffirmed the American constitutional order is the latest example that the Republican-appointed justices are not in the hip pocket of Donald Trump and the extreme right of the Republican Party.This should provide comfort for those who believe in the separation of powers as prescribed in our Constitution.John A. ViterittiLaurel, N.Y.To the Editor:Adam Liptak writes about the Supreme Court’s ruling that soundly dismissed the “independent state legislature” theory.The article quotes Richard L. Hasen, a U.C.L.A. law professor and leading election law scholar, who said the ruling giving the Supreme Court the ultimate say in federal election disputes was “a bad, but not awful, result.”It seems globally accepted that legal disputes, including election disputes, should be decided by courts, and that in federal democracies, the highest national courts are best suited to have the last word in federal election cases.While it is common for politicians and lawyers worldwide to dismiss international best practices based on the uniqueness of their legal systems, in the U.S., too, only the Supreme Court can ensure consistency across all states and thus protect the integrity of federal elections.Jurij ToplakNew YorkThe writer is a visiting professor at Fordham University School of Law.To the Editor:In your article the Supreme Court justices whose opinions pose a threat to voting rights and democracy are referred to as “conservative.” The justices’ positions are not “conservative,” if conservative refers to those who are committed to preserve traditional institutions, practices and values.I would ask that The Times consider a better word to describe these justices, whose positions on legal issues are heavily influenced by considerations of preserving Republican rule, class structures and Christian ideological dominance.Cindy WeinbaumAtlantaRace and Class Pablo DelcanTo the Editor:Re “Reparations Should Be an End, Not a Beginning,” by John McWhorter (Opinion, June 26):Providing support for those who have been hurt by past discrimination is an important step in alleviating the harm caused by America’s long history of racism.However, including all who are economically disadvantaged in any initiatives, as Professor McWhorter suggests, will broaden support for affirmative action programs while assisting more people who need a hand up.Ignoring this slice of the populace is what has led to simmering resentment in many communities and to the election of Donald Trump in 2016.Rather than pitting groups against one another, we should strive to lift up the fallen, regardless of the origin of people’s suffering.Edwin AndrewsMalden, Mass.Demand Tax ReliefHomeowners 65 or older with income of less than $500,000 could qualify for a property tax cut of as much as $6,500 a year.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Property Taxes Could Be Cut in Half for Older New Jersey Homeowners” (news article, June 22):As a suburban homeowner in Nassau County in New York, I find it reassuring to see neighboring New Jersey working hard to address the problem of high property taxes. It just approved a property tax reduction program for homeowners 65-plus called StayNJ, designed to offset some of the highest property taxes in the country.The people of New York State must demand that their elected officials pass similar relief for their constituents, who also live in a state with high property taxes. We are still suffering from a $10,000 state and local taxes deduction cap on our federal income tax that was passed under former President Donald Trump.Congressional Democrats promised to repeal this as one of their legislative priorities and have failed to keep their promise so far. So it is up to us to demand action from the New York State Legislature.Philip A. Paoli Jr.Seaford, N.Y.‘Make Reading Fun Again’To the Editor:Re “13-Year-Olds in U.S. Record Lowest Test Scores in Decades” (news article, June 22):The latest data is out on reading scores for 13-year-olds in the U.S., and it’s not good. Children’s reading levels are at their lowest in decades.In your article, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics states, “This is a huge-scale challenge that faces the nation.”Indeed, we see this challenge every day in the faces of children in our homes, schools and communities. We are responding by bolstering instruction, tutoring and summer learning, all of which offer reason to hope.But what stood out to me most in this story was that fewer kids report reading for fun, with 31 percent saying they “never or hardly ever” read for fun, compared with 22 percent in 2012.Could reigniting a love for reading and the joy of books be an answer we’re missing to this problem? Imagine every child with an abundant home library, cuddled up with a parent or under the covers reading a book, starting from birth.At a time when our education system is struggling, and life is hard for so many children, let’s make reading fun again!Mary MathewDurham, N.C.The writer is director of advocacy for Book Harvest, which provides books and literacy support to children and families.The German Far Right Should Worry Us AllAn AfD demonstration on energy security and inflation, outside of the Reichstag in Berlin in October.Christoph Soeder/DPA, via Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “As German Worries About Future Rise, Far-Right Party Surges” (news article, June 21):The expanding and emboldened far-right element in Germany is not solely a concern for Germans; it is also troubling for the international community in general and Jews in particular.Extremism fueled by xenophobia and a deep sense of nationalism in a country that carried out the systematic murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust is foreboding and a grave threat to democracy.With global antisemitism increasing at an alarming rate and Nazism experiencing an unsettling resurgence, the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany and the political gains that it has made are a proverbial red flag.When extremism becomes normalized and gains a foothold in the mainstream political arena and people flagrantly fan the flames of fanaticism, we have a societal and moral obligation to sound the alarm.N. Aaron TroodlerBala Cynwyd, Pa. More

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      Today’s Top News: The Supreme Court Rules in a Major Election Law Case, and More

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      The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about 10 minutes. Hosted by Annie Correal, the new morning show features three top stories from reporters across the newsroom and around the world, so you always have a sense of what’s happening, even if you only have a few minutes to spare.On Tuesday, the Supreme Court rejected an extreme legal theory which argues that the Constitution gives state legislatures unchecked power to set the rules for federal elections.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesOn Today’s Episode:Supreme Court Rejects Theory That Would Have Transformed American Elections, with Adam LiptakHow Lukashenko Turned the Wagner Revolt into a Public Relations Victory, with Valerie Hopkins Ryan Seacrest Named New ‘Wheel of Fortune’ Host, with John KoblinEli Cohen More

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      Trump Criminal Case Likely to Remain in N.Y. State Court, Judge Says

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      The judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein, said he was not inclined to move the Manhattan district attorney’s case against the former president to federal court.A judge on Tuesday indicated that he was likely to deny a request from lawyers for Donald J. Trump to move a New York State criminal case against the former president to federal court.The federal judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein, said that he would issue a written ruling within two weeks, but was inclined not to transfer the case brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office which stems from a hush-money payment before the 2016 presidential election.“There is no reason to believe that an equal measure of justice couldn’t be rendered by the state court,” Judge Hellerstein said, after calling a central argument made by one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers “far-fetched.”After the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, unveiled the 34 felony charges against Mr. Trump in March, lawyers for the former president argued that the proper venue was federal court, in part because the conduct had occurred while Mr. Trump was in office.The payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, was made on Mr. Trump’s behalf by his former fixer, Michael D. Cohen, to buy her silence about a tryst she said she had with Mr. Trump. Once Mr. Trump was elected, he reimbursed Mr. Cohen. Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors have accused Mr. Trump of falsifying business records to disguise the purpose of the reimbursements.Mr. Trump’s lawyers would have had to convince Judge Hellerstein, who sits in Manhattan, that the accusations were related in some way to Mr. Trump’s official duties as president.Todd Blanche, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, argued that any work that Mr. Cohen did would have been related to Mr. Trump’s presidency: He said that Mr. Trump hired Mr. Cohen — who had been his longtime fixer — as a personal lawyer to ensure that he was fulfilling his constitutional duties.Matthew Colangelo, a prosecutor for the district attorney’s office, argued that Mr. Cohen’s hiring demonstrated the opposite. “These are personal payments to a personal lawyer handling his personal affairs.”Judge Hellerstein appeared to agree, saying that it was “very clear” that the act for which Mr. Trump had been indicted did not relate to the presidency. At one point, in a phrase that echoed Mr. Colangelo, the judge said of Mr. Cohen that “he was hired as a private matter to take care of private matters.”The judge said that his closing remarks from the bench were not binding, but that they would “presage” his ruling. If he rules as he suggested he would, the case would proceed as expected in state court, where a trial has been scheduled for March 25.A preview of how that trial might play out came during the hearing when Mr. Blanche unexpectedly called a witness to testify about Mr. Cohen’s role when he worked as a personal lawyer to Mr. Trump. He was trying to show how that role related to the official duties of the presidency.The witness, Alan Garten, the chief legal officer of the Trump Organization, was then cross-examined by Susan Hoffinger, the head of investigations at the district attorney’s office.Ms. Hoffinger tried to show that the arrangement with Mr. Cohen — without a retainer and with payments whose purpose was recorded without any description of the work involved in Mr. Trump’s ledger — was atypical. Mr. Garten acknowledged that it was irregular, but said that such arrangements did happen “from time to time.” More

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      The Supreme Court Rejects a Once-Fringe Elections Theory

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      Also, the Wagner chief begins exile in Belarus. Here’s the latest at the end of Tuesday.Justices on the country’s highest court rejected a legal theory that would have radically reshaped how elections are conducted by giving state legislatures largely unchecked power to set rules for federal elections and to draw congressional maps warped by partisan gerrymandering. The 6-to-3 decision was cheered by voting rights advocates who feared an undemocratic fallout if the Supreme Court had ruled the other way.“If the theory had been upheld, it would have been chaotic,” my colleague Michael Wines said. “In states like Wisconsin and Ohio, it basically would have allowed legislators to enshrine themselves in power all but permanently. They could’ve done whatever they wanted pertaining to redistricting or, for that matter, ordinary election law.”Proponents of the “independent state legislature” theory argued that — based on a reading of the Constitution’s Elections Clause — no court or organ of state government, like election administrators or independent commissions, could alter a legislature’s actions on federal elections. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing the majority opinion, rejected that position. He said that the Constitution “does not exempt state legislatures from the ordinary constraints imposed by state law.”The case, however, will have no practical impact on the dispute that gave rise to it, involving North Carolina’s congressional voting map. A recent ruling by that state’s Supreme Court authorized the legislature, which is controlled by Republicans, to draw maps as it sees fit, ensuring that the resulting districts will be warped by politics.The Supreme Court will announce its next rulings on Thursday. Some of its biggest cases — on affirmative action, student loans and gay rights — are still awaiting decisions.Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner leader, in the city of Rostov-on-Don, Russia, on Saturday.Alexander Ermochenko/ReutersPrigozhin arrived in BelarusYevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian mercenary leader whose mutiny came to a sudden halt over the weekend, is now in Belarus, the state news media there reported. The Russian authorities also dropped their charges against him and his fighters.It is clear that the Kremlin, which faced its most significant challenge in President Vladimir Putin’s two-decade rule, is making a concerted effort to move on from the mutiny and the questions it raised. But while many of Russia’s friends and partners expressed support for Putin, analysts said that doubts about his strength might linger.William Dorsey, an emergency medical worker, helped a woman with heat exhaustion in Eagle Pass, Texas, yesterday.Kaylee Greenlee Beal/ReutersDangerous heat spreads across the SoutheastMillions of people in Texas and Oklahoma have spent the past several days baking under triple-digit temperatures that are considered dangerous. But as the week goes on, the scorching conditions will extend east, bringing unsafe weather to millions more in parts of Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida.The unusually hot, early summer temperatures are the result of a stubborn “heat dome” of high pressure (akin to a lid on a pot that holds in steam).For more: Check out whether the heat wave will affect you, and read tips for staying safe.A vigil in 2015 for a 17-year-old transgender girl who died by suicide in Ohio.Meg Vogel/The Enquirer, via Associated PressTransgender people may have a higher risk of suicideA landmark study in Denmark has found that transgender people have a significantly higher risk of suicide than other groups. The new report, which analyzed the health and legal records from nearly seven million people over four decades, is the first in the world to examine national suicide data for transgender people.The findings come at a charged political moment in the U.S., as Republican lawmakers enact laws targeting medical care for transgender people. Here is what those laws say.More top newsPolitics: Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are holding dueling events today in New Hampshire.Jeffrey Epstein: A government watchdog confirmed that he died by suicide, but pointed to negligence and mismanagement at the jail that housed him.Legal: An appeals court dismissed the New York attorney general’s civil case against Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter. It also potentially limited the case against the former president and his family business, which is set to go to trial in October.Business: The trucking company Yellow, which received a $700 million pandemic-era loan from the government, may file for bankruptcy protection this summer.Workplace: A new federal law that took effect today requires employers to provide “reasonable accommodations” for pregnant and postpartum workers.Energy: Construction has started off Massachusetts on the first giant wind farm off the U.S. coastline.Health: The U.S. identified — in Florida and Texas — its first cases of local malaria transmission in two decades.Safety: More than 7,500 people were struck and killed by vehicles in 2022, the highest number in more than four decades.Rome: A tourist who scratched his name into a wall of the Colosseum faces up to five years in prison.EVENING WIND DOWNRyan Seacrest in 2019.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesRyan Seacrest will host ‘Wheel of Fortune’Two weeks ago, Pat Sajak announced that he would step down from hosting “Wheel of Fortune” after more than four decades on the job. The show, which has demonstrated remarkable durability even as traditional television viewership has declined, promptly selected its next host.The new man at the wheel will be Ryan Seacrest, the dexterous master of ceremonies who rose to Hollywood fame as the host of “American Idol.” The swift decision by executives at Sony Pictures Television, which produces the show, suggests that they are hoping to avoid the succession fiasco that nearly overwhelmed their other hit game show, “Jeopardy!”The tour group Fat Girls Travel, Too! visits Cartagena, Colombia.Deon TillmanPlus-size travel is getting easierVacation is meant to be relaxing. But for people with bigger bodies, it can be disappointing: Airline seats may be too small, amusement parks impose strict limits, beaches can be intimidating and, if your luggage is lost, finding clothes that fit may be difficult.Now a small but growing market catering to size-inclusive travel, often aimed exclusively at women, is seeking to bring joy, community and reassurance to plus-size travelers.For more: Americans are flocking to Europe this summer. If you’re one of them, here’s what you can expect.Dinner table topicsFame for her shame: Mackenzie Thomas shares diary entries from her adolescent years that make people feel less embarrassed by their past selves.A.I. and TV ads: A string of uncanny videos show what A.I. and advertising have in common: They chew up the cultural subconscious and spit it back at us.All-Star Game: The Yankees could be shut out of the event for only the third time in its history.Home advice: Our Ask Real Estate columnist reflected on a decade of answering your questions.WHAT TO DO TONIGHTLinda Xiao for The New York TimesCook: When another summer tomato sandwich just won’t do, try this BLT pasta instead.Listen: On “Popcast,” our pop music critic talks about Kylie Minogue’s “Padam Padam” and the queer pop-club canon.Watch: In “Sin La Habana,” an Afro-Cuban dancer tries to bring his girlfriend to Canada through a sham marriage.Read: These three new novels hold the keys to real and imagined kingdoms.Regulate: Why do I wake up right before my alarm?Meditate: Write your name in Chinese calligraphy — over and over. You’ll be surprised by what you learn.Play: Here are today’s Spelling Bee, Wordle and Mini Crossword. For more, find all our games here.ONE LAST THINGDodai StewartNotes from New YorkersNo matter where you go in New York City, you will almost certainly be inundated with signs. Most obvious are the advertisements, directions and commands (Don’t Block the Box). But my colleague Dodai Stewart has taken notice of the more personal notes that are written, posted and stuck around the city. They are New York’s direct messages.“Don’t be so nostalgic,” read one scrawled in marker on the subway platform column. “You’re perfect just the way you are,” read another.In a city that shouts and blares, these little whispers are funny, philosophical, smarmy and mysterious reflections of New York’s never-ending conversation.Have an expressive evening.Thanks for reading. I’ll be back tomorrow. — MatthewSign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.We welcome your feedback. Write to us at evening@nytimes.com. More