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    These Are the People Running for NYC Mayor Against Adams

    Now that Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted, his path to re-election in New York is likely to become much more difficult.Mr. Adams is running for a second term in a competitive Democratic primary next June. Already, four prominent Democrats have entered the race, arguing that Mr. Adams is a poor manager and has not addressed the city’s affordability crisis. And even more challengers may enter the race.So far, the field includes Brad Lander, the city’s left-leaning comptroller who recently pledged to end street homelessness for severely mentally ill people, and Scott Stringer, a former city comptroller who has focused on affordable housing and whose 2021 mayoral campaign was derailed by allegations of sexual misconduct.There is also Zellnor Myrie, a state senator from Brooklyn who is proposing free “universal after-school” programs, and Jessica Ramos, a state senator from Queens who has focused on affordability and is friendly with unions.Zohran Mamdani, a state assemblyman from Queens who is weighing entering the race, wants to stop rent increases that have taken place under Mr. Adams. And former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who resigned in 2021 after facing a series of sexual harassment allegations, is also considering running, and has focused this year on combating antisemitism.If Mr. Adams resigns, the city’s public advocate, Jumaane Williams, would become acting mayor and might run for the job on a permanent basis. Mr. Williams is a left-leaning former City Council member from Brooklyn who has been a fierce critic of Mr. Adams, assailing the mayor’s aggressive policing strategy.Mr. Adams’s approval rating was already dismal before his indictment. In a Quinnipiac poll taken last December, only 28 percent of New Yorkers approved of the job he was doing — the lowest rating for any New York City mayor in a Quinnipiac survey since it began polling the city in 1996.Mr. Adams, a former police officer who ran for mayor on a public safety message, won by a slim margin in the 2021 Democratic primary. He beat his closest challenger, Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, by roughly 7,200 votes. More

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    What Happens if Eric Adams Resigns?

    If Mayor Eric Adams were to resign, New York City’s public advocate, Jumaane Williams, would become the acting mayor.Mr. Williams, a left-leaning Democrat from Brooklyn, has served as public advocate since winning a special election in 2019. He was re-elected to a full term in 2021 and ran unsuccessfully for governor the next year.Mr. Williams has been a fierce critic of Mr. Adams, assailing the mayor’s aggressive policing strategy and pushing to end solitary confinement in city jails. Mr. Williams has also cast doubts about the mayor’s ability to govern amid a swirl of federal investigations.Within three days of becoming mayor, Mr. Williams would name a date for a special election to pick a new mayor, according to the city’s charter. The nonpartisan election could be held within 90 days. The city’s relatively new ranked-choice voting system, in which voters can rank multiple candidates, would be used.No public advocate has become acting mayor before. Only two mayors have resigned — Jimmy Walker in 1932 and William O’Dwyer in 1950 — both after corruption scandals. The office of public advocate was created in 1993.Mr. Williams said recently that he was exhausted and angered by the troubling headlines about Mr. Adams and his administration, arguing that the municipal corruption scandals appeared to be “the worst since Tammany Hall.”“I’m not sure how you continue to govern with, every day, more corrupt arrests, more corrupt suspicions,” he said.Mr. Adams has insisted that he will not resign. The mayor recently told reporters that more than 700,000 people had voted for him in the 2021 election.“I was elected by the people of the city, and I’m going to fulfill my obligation to the people of this city,” he said.On Wednesday, after news of his indictment was made public, the mayor made it clear that his stance had not changed.“I always knew that if I stood my ground for New Yorkers that I would be a target — and a target I became,” Mr. Adams said in a statement. “If I am charged, I am innocent and I will fight this with every ounce of my strength and spirit.” More

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    Trump Gets a Lift From Arizona Ticket-Splitters Backing a Democrat for Senate

    Representative Ruben Gallego, the Democratic candidate for Senate, leads in this key contest, a New York Times/Siena College poll found, while Kamala Harris trails Donald Trump.Former President Donald J. Trump appears to be benefiting from ticket-splitters in Arizona, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll released on Monday, a finding that highlights his strength with Latino and younger voters as well as the unique weaknesses of the Republican nominee for Senate.The poll found Representative Ruben Gallego, the Democratic candidate for Senate, leading Kari Lake, a close ally of Mr. Trump’s, by six percentage points, even as Mr. Trump has opened up a five-point lead in the state over Vice President Kamala Harris.Such a scenario would represent a notable degree of ticket-splitting, perpetuating a trend captured by surveys throughout this election cycle. Democratic Senate candidates in a number of swing states, including Arizona and Nevada, have consistently polled ahead of the top of the ticket, especially when President Biden was the party’s standard-bearer. As Ms. Harris’s nomination has made the election more competitive, the gap between her and those down-ballot Democrats has narrowed — but the trend persists in most races in swing states.“Donald Trump creates his own weather, and he has a coalition supporting him like no other Republican nominee in our lifetime — perhaps ever — in Arizona,” said Stan Barnes, a former Republican state lawmaker who is now a political consultant there. He pointed to the support Mr. Trump has garnered from young people and voters of color, who traditionally lean Democratic, in surveys this year. “He’s breaking out of that rule, and it does not translate down-ballot,” he said.In 2022, Ms. Lake angered many traditionally Republican voters during her divisive governor’s race, feuding with the governor at the time, Doug Ducey, a conservative Republican, and angering supporters of Senator John McCain, who died in 2018, by saying her political rise “drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine.” She further alienated some Republicans by filing a series of lawsuits after she lost her election, claiming that it had been stolen.This year, she has tried to change tactics, courting the moderate wing of the Republican Party in Arizona. But old grievances die hard.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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    Congress Unveils Short-Term Spending Deal

    Speaker Mike Johnson dropped his demands for proof-of-citizenship voting requirements to strike a deal that includes more money for the Secret Service and funds the government through Dec. 20.Congressional leaders from both parties unveiled a short-term agreement to fund the government on Sunday, after Speaker Mike Johnson abandoned demands for a longer-term deal that also included new proof-of-citizenship requirements for voter registration.The deal, which extends federal appropriations through Dec. 20, includes an additional $231 million to help the beleaguered Secret Service protect candidates during the upcoming presidential election and into next year. According to the Treasury Department, the United States has spent about $6.3 trillion in fiscal 2024, which ends on Sept. 30.The timeline of the deal allows Congress to sidestep a government shutdown during the campaign season, but it all but ensures that spending disputes will dominate the lame-duck period between the election and the inauguration of a new Congress in January.“While I am pleased bipartisan negotiations quickly led to a government funding agreement free of cuts and poison pills, this same agreement could have been done two weeks ago,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said in a statement heralding the temporary spending patch — known as a continuing resolution — and blaming Republicans for dragging their heels. “Instead, Speaker Johnson chose to follow the MAGA way and wasted precious time.”In a letter on Sunday to his colleagues explaining why he was forced to take the deal, Mr. Johnson wrote, “A continuing resolution is the only option that remains.” He promised to put it to a floor vote this week.Mr. Johnson had made it a personal crusade to include in the spending package legislation requiring people to prove their U.S. citizenship when registering to vote, arguing it was necessary to prevent fraud, despite scant evidence of noncitizens voting. That requirement, known as the SAVE Act, was also supported by the hard right and by former President Donald J. Trump, who called on Congress not to pass a spending plan without “every ounce” of the proposal.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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    Rallying in Two Key States, Harris Presses Her Case on Abortion Rights

    Rallying supporters in two battleground states, Vice President Kamala Harris signaled on Friday that her closing campaign message would focus on the life-or-death risks that abortion bans pose to American women — and on the argument that former President Donald J. Trump is to blame.In Madison, Wis., a crowd that had been ebullient suddenly grew hushed as Ms. Harris spoke about her visit with the family of a Georgia woman who died of sepsis after waiting for more than 20 hours for medical care to treat an incomplete medication abortion.“She was a vibrant 28-year-old,” Ms. Harris said. “Her name, Amber Nicole Thurman, and I promised her mother I would say her name every time.”Earlier in the day, Ms. Harris traveled to Georgia, where Ms. Thurman and another woman, Candi Miller, died after delays in medical care tied to state abortion restrictions, according to reporting by ProPublica. Their deaths occurred in the months after Georgia passed a six-week ban made possible by the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.In Atlanta, Ms. Harris condemned the deaths of the two women in an impassioned speech, saying that Mr. Trump had caused a “health care crisis” and that women were being made to feel as “though they are criminals.”Ms. Harris’s stops in the two battleground states capped a relatively smooth week for her campaign as Mr. Trump again caused or confronted several politically unhelpful headlines and controversies. Most strikingly, the Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina, whom Mr. Trump has praised as “Martin Luther King on steroids,” was found to have called himself a “Black Nazi” and praised slavery in a pornographic chat room.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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    Supreme Court Won’t Restore Jill Stein to the Nevada Ballot

    Democrats had argued that Ms. Stein, the Green Party’s presidential candidate, was ineligible because the party had failed to submit a required statement.The Supreme Court said on Friday that it would not restore the Green Party’s presidential candidate, Jill Stein, to the Nevada ballot in the coming election. Democrats had challenged her eligibility, saying her party had submitted flawed paperwork.The court’s brief order gave no reasons, which is typical when it acts on emergency applications. There were no noted dissents.The Nevada Supreme Court ruled this month that the Green Party’s failure to submit a sworn statement required by state regulations meant that its candidates could not appear on the ballot. The party acknowledged the lapse but said it had relied on instructions from a state election official.The party was represented in the Supreme Court by Jay Sekulow, who has served as a lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump.In response to an inquiry from the party in July, an official sent what she said were the required forms, saying “please use the documents attached to begin collecting signatures.”The party submitted the required number of signatures, and election officials placed its candidates on the ballot after they verified a sampling of the signatures. The Nevada Democratic Party sued, saying the Green Party had failed to supply a sworn statement that the signatures were believed to be from voters registered in the counties in which they lived.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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    After Trump Assassination Attempts, Congress Debates Secret Service Funding

    Virtually everyone on Capitol Hill agrees that the Secret Service needs to do a better job. But Democrats and Republicans are at odds over whether to increase the agency’s budget.After the second assassination attempt against former President Donald J. Trump in two months, a fevered debate has broken out in Congress over whether the Secret Service needs more money.Because the dispute is unfolding on Capitol Hill and comes little more than six weeks before a presidential election, the question has, perhaps predictably, become mired in politics. And given that there are only 11 days before Congress’s deadline for extending federal spending, it is threatening to complicate already contentious negotiations aimed at heading off a government shutdown on Oct. 1.Republicans have sought to pin blame on Democrats and their anti-Trump statements for the actions of Ryan W. Routh, 58, who was arrested on Sunday after hiding in the bushes with an assault rifle at Mr. Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach, Fla., in an apparent attempt to target the former president. They have accused the administration of providing better protection for President Biden than for Mr. Trump and plan to vote on Friday on a bill that would ensure that Mr. Trump is protected at the same level as the president — something the Secret Service says is already happening.Democrats, who routinely note that Mr. Trump has long trafficked in the kind of bellicose language that can fuel political violence, have said they are all for beefing up protections for him and fixing what is broken with the Secret Service.They have even offered to increase funding for the embattled agency, including potentially through a stopgap spending bill they are negotiating to avert a government shutdown. In doing so, Democrats are effectively daring Republicans — who are bent on slashing spending, not increasing it — to be the ones to object to paying for increased protection for Mr. Trump.“If the Secret Service is in need of more resources, we are prepared to provide it for them, possibly in the upcoming funding agreement,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said on the floor this week.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