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      Democratic House Candidate Cleared in New York Harassment Inquiry

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      The findings may help the candidate, State Senator John Mannion, in his bid to unseat Representative Brandon Williams in a tossup race.For more than two months, the congressional campaign of John Mannion, perhaps Democrats’ best hope to flip a crucial House seat, has been shadowed by accusations that he created a hostile work environment and berated top aides in the New York State Senate.Now an outside investigation commissioned by the State Senate has ended quietly without reprimand, concluding that Mr. Mannion did not violate the chamber’s harassment and discrimination policy.The conclusion, which can still be appealed, would provide significant relief to Democrats. They are counting on Mr. Mannion, a moderate former teacher, to provide one of the four pickups they need nationwide to take back control of the House. He is facing Representative Brandon Williams, a first-term Republican, in November in a district where Democrats meaningfully outnumber Republicans.The investigation was conducted by Michael Murphy, an outside lawyer hired by the Senate, who completed “a detailed, confidential response” and transmitted his findings clearing the Democrat to the Senate on Aug. 16, according to a previously unreported letter addressed to Mr. Mannion and obtained by The New York Times.Still, the letter was terse and provided little detail about whether Mr. Murphy, a partner at the law firm Barclay Damon, found the accusations to be credible when he interviewed several of the state senator’s former staff members.Neither Mr. Mannion nor Mr. Murphy would comment on the investigation or share a copy of the report on Thursday. A spokesman for the State Senate Democrats declined to comment.The accusations first surfaced in June when a group of former aides published an anonymous letter on Medium accusing Mr. Mannion of a litany of abuses and mistreatment during his brief tenure in the State Senate. The authors wrote that they had been subjected to “out of control yelling” and, in one case, retaliation after reporting that they witnessed a co-worker sexually harass a constituent.“We have come together now to write this letter because there is still time to avoid elevating yet another abuser to high office,” they wrote.Mr. Mannion has denied any wrongdoing. His allies privately dismissed the letter, which was published before a Democratic primary, as a politically motivated smear. Mr. Mannion won the primary anyway. More

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      Democrats Look to End the Electability Question

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      The party is battling a squishy, often self-reinforcing concept about the perceived ability to win.This year, Angela Alsobrooks, the county executive of Prince George’s County, Md., and a Democrat, sought support for her U.S. Senate bid from an elected official she had known for years.“She said to me, ‘I’m so sorry. I want to be really blunt with you, Angela,’” Alsobrooks, who is Black, said, recalling that the official, a fellow Democrat whom she did not name, said she thought Alsobrooks could not win. “We are not ready to elect a Black woman in the state of Maryland,” Alsobrooks recounted the official as saying.It turned out that Maryland Democrats were ready to do just that.Alsobrooks beat a white man in her Senate primary by more than 10 percentage points. Public polling has shown her leading another, former Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, whom she will face in November.But the exchange, which Alsobrooks described in an interview last week during the Democratic National Convention, underscores the way a party that is trying to elect the first Black female president is still battling anxieties about the idea of electability — and preparing to confront them.Electability — a squishy and often self-reinforcing concept about who is perceived as being able to win elections — was a through line of the Democratic primary in 2020, when voters stung by the 2016 election wrung their hands over whether preferred presidential candidates who were female, nonwhite or both could garner enough support in key battleground states. The party ultimately coalesced around Joe Biden.Democrats did not have a chance to air those concerns in a drawn-out primary in 2024, and many suggested last week that identity-based questions about electability should remain firmly in the past. They view the issue of electability as providing cover for racist and sexist notions about white voters being apprehensive about backing Black candidates and male voters being reluctant to vote for female candidates.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Republicans Are Right: One Party is ‘Anti-Family and Anti-Kid’

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      In attacking Democrats and Kamala Harris, Republicans have been making a legitimate point: One of our major political parties has worked to undermine America’s families.The problem? While neither party has done enough to support families and children, the one that is failing most egregiously is — not surprisingly — the one led by the thrice-married tycoon who tangled with a porn star, boasted about grabbing women by the genitals and was found by a jury to have committed sexual assault.You’d think that would make it awkward for the Republican Party to preach family values. But with the same chutzpah with which Donald Trump reportedly marched into a dressing room where teenage girls were half-naked, the G.O.P. claims that it’s the Democrats who betray family values.“The rejection of the American family is perhaps the most pernicious and most evil thing that the left has done in this country,” JD Vance said in 2021. Pressed on those remarks last month, he went further in a conversation with Megyn Kelly, saying that Democrats “have become anti-family and anti-kid.”This is gibberish. Children are more likely to be poor, to die young and to drop out of high school in red states than in blue states. The states with the highest divorce rates are mostly Republican, and with some exceptions like Utah, it’s in red states that babies are more likely to be born to unmarried mothers (partly because of lack of access to reliable contraception).One of President Biden’s greatest achievements was to cut the child poverty rate by almost half, largely with the refundable child tax credit. Then Republicans killed the program, sending child poverty soaring again.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In Las Vegas, Trump Calls Harris a ‘Copycat’ Over ‘No Tax on Tips’ Plan

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      Former President Donald J. Trump on Friday fumed over the fact that when it comes to exempting tips from being taxed, he and his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, are on the same page.Mr. Trump, before a gathering of supporters at a Las Vegas restaurant, complained that Ms. Harris had stolen his idea and sought to cast her as an opportunist who was pandering to service industry workers by cribbing from one of his signature proposals.“She’s a copycat,” Mr. Trump said. “She’s a flip-flopper, you know. She’s the greatest flip-flopper in history. She went from communism to capitalism in about two weeks.”A Harris campaign spokesman declined to comment. This month, while in Las Vegas herself, Ms. Harris said she would seek to end federal income taxes on tips if she were elected. Mr. Trump first floated the idea in June, and it quickly garnered bipartisan support.He has publicly stewed over her embrace of the plan, especially in Nevada, a battleground state that Mr. Trump lost in 2016 and 2020.Before President Biden withdrew from the race in late July, Mr. Trump had appeared to be on a trajectory to end his electoral drought in the desert — where one of his hotels towers over the Strip. Mr. Biden, whose campaign called the “no tax on tips” overture a “wild campaign promise,” had been trailing Mr. Trump by an average of seven percentage points in Nevada.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kerry Washington, Who Played Olivia Pope on ‘Scandal,’ Hosts DNC Night 4

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      The star of the hit show “Scandal” is emcee for the final night’s program at the Democratic National Convention.When “Scandal” debuted on ABC in 2012, Kerry Washington became the first Black woman to play the leading role in a network drama in almost 40 years. The show was a hit, particularly with Black viewers. At one point, more than 10 percent of Black households tuned in weekly to see Ms. Washington play a hard-charging Washington lawyer.On Thursday, Ms. Washington — known to fans of the show as Olivia Pope — stepped into the real-life political spotlight as the fourth and final host of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.Tony Goldwyn, Ms. Washington’s “Scandal” co-star, was the first host. Ana Navarro, a Republican commentator, and the actress and comedian Mindy Kaling filled the role on the intervening days.On “Scandal,” Ms. Washington’s Olivia Pope character captivated audiences with her political acumen, striking intelligence and flawless professional style — crisp suits, elegant wraps, red-soled Louboutin heels.After the show went off the air in 2018, Ms. Washington increased her own political activity. She told The Hollywood Reporter last year that she was inspired in part by how the character shaped the audience’s feelings about politics and activism.“People wanted this imaginary character to fix their problems, and I felt like this was a moment of real disconnect because we’re living in a democracy; we’re the people who hold the power to unlock the change that’s most important, but we keep passing that power off to characters on television,” Ms. Washington said.Last year, she started a nonprofit, the KW Foundation, to support civic engagement. On several occasions, she has taken to social media to encourage her followers to register to vote, often with messages sure to grab the attention of “Scandal” fans. In one, she posted what she said was information about a “Scandal” movie. The link actually redirected to a voter registration website.Thursday marks the third time Ms. Washington has spoken at a political convention. In 2012, she delivered remarks at former President Barack Obama’s second nominating convention, and in 2020 she was one of several celebrities to emcee President Biden’s virtual convention.Ms. Washington has been an enthusiastic convention attendee this week, posing for photos with Mr. Goldwyn, Oprah Winfrey and various politicians including Representative Nancy Pelosi, Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland and former President Bill Clinton.Ms. Harris and Ms. Washington have met before, when Ms. Washington visited the White House last year. It’s not clear what they discussed, but in an apparent nod to her tenure as a (fictional) D.C. operative, Ms. Harris posted a photo to social media with the caption “Welcome back to the White House.” More

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      Members of ‘Central Park 5’ Say Trump Is Too Dangerous for Second Term

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      Not long after the rape and beating of a white female jogger in Central Park in 1989, Donald J. Trump took out full-page newspaper ads about the case, calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty.The five Black and Latino teenagers accused in the attack — Korey Wise, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson and Antron McCray, known as the Central Park Five — served years in prison before being cleared in 2002 by DNA evidence and the confession of another man.But Mr. Trump has refused to apologize.At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Thursday night, four of the five men — who now prefer to be called the Exonerated Five — said that what Mr. Trump did to them was devastating and proves that he is too callous and dangerous to serve a second term as president.The men, excluding Mr. McCray, who was not present, offered vigorous endorsements of Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz.Mr. Wise, who served more than 13 years in prison, the longest term among the group, told the convention crowd that the men’s youth had been stolen from them and they faced the screams of adults as they entered court each day because of Mr. Trump’s actions.“He called us animals. He spent $85,000 on a full-page ad in The New York Times calling for our execution,” Mr. Wise said. “We were innocent kids, but we served a total of 41 years in prison.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Oprah Winfrey Speaks at DNC, Revealing Short Film on the American Dream

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      Night 3 of the Democratic National Convention is not lacking for stars of the small screen: Mindy Kaling is the evening’s M.C., and the “Saturday Night Live” stalwart Kenan Thompson made a cameo.But the appearance of one television icon was kept under wraps until she stepped onstage to deafening cheers from her hometown crowd: Oprah Winfrey, the talk-show host turned billionaire media mogul who built her career in Chicago.The fact that Ms. Winfrey, an inspirational figure for many women and Black voters, appeared at all represented a feat by aides to Vice President Kamala Harris.The television star had never before spoken at a national convention. Her message of uplift and optimism is a neat fit for the themes that Democrats have sought to emphasize at this week’s jamboree. And as far as political campaigns go, she has carefully picked her battles, withholding the Oprah seal of approval for all but a few candidates.In 2007, Ms. Winfrey endorsed a presidential hopeful for the first time: Barack Obama, a close friend and a compatriot from Chicago’s power circles. Ms. Winfrey hosted fund-raisers and barnstormed cities in Iowa to round up votes for Mr. Obama, who at the time seemed a long shot to win the nomination.In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s campaign sought to capitalize on Ms. Winfrey’s popularity by lobbying her for a full-throated endorsement. It never came. Ms. Winfrey mostly stayed away from politics that year, although she did tell one morning show interviewer, “I’m with her.”In 2018, Ms. Winfrey stirred speculation that she herself might seek the White House. A speech she delivered at the Golden Globes, where she was accepting a lifetime achievement award, was shared widely for its stirring delivery and approach to grand themes like sexism and racism in America.The conversation died down after Ms. Winfrey poured cold water on the idea of a run, but it highlighted the thirst among Democrats, in the midst of Donald J. Trump’s administration, for a media-savvy contender who could wave the party flag. More