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      in US Politics

      Trump defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth’s mother called him ‘an abuser of women’

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      The family dynamics of Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, have burst out into the open after an email from his mother criticizing her son over his treatment of women and calling him an “abuser of women” was leaked to a newspaper.A 2018 email from Penelope Hegseth accused her son of routinely mistreating women and displaying a lack of character.“You are an abuser of women – that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego,” Penelope Hegseth wrote in the email obtained by the New York Times.“You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth,” she added, advising her son to “get some help and take an honest look at yourself”.Penelope Hegseth told the New York Times she had written the message “in anger, with emotion” while her son was going through an acrimonious divorce from his second wife, Samantha, the mother of three of his children, and had immediately apologized to her son in a second email.She rejected her earlier characterization of her son to the outlet. “It is not true. It has never been true,” she said. She added: “I know my son. He is a good father, husband.” She said that publishing the contents of the first email was “disgusting”.The release of the letter comes ahead of Hegseth’s confirmation hearings in the Senate after Trump takes office on 20 January, in which the veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will come under scrutiny.Hegseth, a former Fox & Friends host, is already facing questions over payments he reportedly made to a woman who accused him of sexual assault – an encounter that he insists was consensual.Hegseth’s attorney has said his client was “visibly intoxicated” at the time of the incident in a Monterey, California, hotel in 2017 and police who had looked into the woman’s claim had concluded that “the complainant had been the aggressor in the encounter”.In a statement, Hegseth’s lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, said his client had agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to the woman because he feared that revelation of the matter “would result in his immediate termination from Fox”.Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung told the Times that the outlet was “despicable” for publishing “an out-of-context snippet” of Penelope Hegseth’s exchange with her son. More

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      ‘An existential battle’: how Trump’s win is shifting the US media landscape

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      When MSNBC’s morning hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski announced to their viewers last week that they had paid a visit to Donald Trump at his Florida resort of Mar-a-Lago they must have suspected there would be a reaction.The married co-hosts on the liberal news network made hay for years lambasting Trump, especially in the run-up to the presidential election. Now, in the wake of his victory, they told their viewers they were seeking to reset communications with the man they had warned only a few weeks ago was set to bring fascism to America.“Joe and I realized it’s time to do something different,’ Brzezinski told Morning Joe viewers on Monday. “That starts with not only talking about Donald Trump but also talking with him.”Their reward? An online barn-burning by their critics online and a fall in viewer numbers for a show – and a network – already struggling in a rapidly declining US cable news sector. The following morning, broadcast viewing figures for the network plummeted 38%, according to Nielsen Media Research.Yet Scarborough and Brzezinski’s about-face is just one data point in the US media landscape that shows that some core elements of the press in America may be recalibrating its approach to how it covers the second Trump administration and where the all-in oppositional attitude that defined much of the press in his first term is in retreat.Yet the moves come after an election campaign in which Trump frequently attacked the media and dubbed them “enemies of the people”. It comes as his allies have threatened to curb the press and attack their media critics. They have also already launched a wave of multibillion-dollar lawsuits against a host of media companies for their coverage that they often baselessly claim to be bias, such as Trump’s allegation that CBS misleadingly edited an interview with Kamala Harris.Certainly those threats seemed to be at play with MSNBC, which is now also facing an uncertain future as the network is being spun off by its corporate parent, Comcast. A subsequent sale would come under the purview of Trump-appointed regulators.According to Puck News, the couple’s visit to Trump’s tropical paradise was because Scarborough was said to be “petrified” that the president-elect’s Department of Justice would go after him. “That’s what this was about,” a source told the news site about the motive. “It has nothing to do with ratings or Comcast. It’s all about fear of retribution and investigation.”“It was about access and power,” said Jeff Jarvis, a media writer. “But this visit didn’t do anything for access, and they didn’t come back with anything journalistic. They were willing to throw the reputation of the show, their reputations and the reputation of the network over for their own personal fears.”But MSNBC is not alone in facing tough choices. The US media are facing numerous issues: fears over what Trump might do, complex business decisions and interests faced by their corporate owners, and also an understanding that the president-elect won the popular vote, showing that their audiences exist beyond the safe havens of Trump criticism.But these are choppy waters. The Washington Post, famed for bringing down Richard Nixon, has been the focus of controversy under its billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, and the British journalist, Will Lewis, he has tasked with running the once-storied brand.The Washington Post lost 250,000 subscribers after it declined to make a presidential endorsement. Bezos defended the decision, triggering suspicion that Amazon’s role as a defense industry data cloud contractor had played a part. But since Trump won, Lewis has not changed tack and a longstanding and widely respected political editor at the paper was reportedly removed from his job last week.The Post’s controversy has played at the same time as the Los Angeles Times made a similar call to block an endorsement of Kamala Harris, also triggering widespread dismay in the newsroom and a questioning of how critical of Trump the newspaper would continue to be.The Los Angeles Times’ billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, framed the matter as an attempt at neutrality, though his activist daughter Nika Soon-Shiong also said the decision was informed by Harris’s continued support for Israel as it wars in Gaza – which he later confirmed in an internal email.After years of anti-Trump coverage under Jeff Zucker, CNN is also effecting course-correction. Last week, the cable news giant’s Dana Bash said it was unclear whether a group of men carrying swastika flags marching in Columbus, Ohio, belonged to the far right or far left.“A group of neo-Nazis paraded through that city wearing, waving swastikas, covering their faces,” Bash said. “We don’t know what side of the aisle this comes from. I mean, typically neo-Nazis are from the far right.” The statement immediately attracted ridicule for its seemingly bizarre attempt at neutrality.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSome at the New York Times, too, are offering a more ameliorated tone than under the first Trump administration, even as the paper has continued to break stories on Trump’s preparations to return to power. The columnist David Brooks advocated soon after the election that Trump is a “sower of chaos, not fascism”, adding: “In chaos there’s opportunity for a new society and a new response to the Trumpian political, economic and psychological assault.”It is certainly a complex challenge. The media’s symbiotic relationship with Trump was both nurturing and self-destructive the first time around as readerships boomed, but a significant chunk of the population – the chunk that delivered Trump back into the White House – became even more hostile to the mainstream media and embraced the idea it was “fake news”.The news industry in the US, with a few exceptions, is on life support as audiences fracture and social media traffic referrals dry up. Social media is more trusted by the public, and the press is now facing a second hostile Trump administration with diminished resources.But would a more restrained approach work? Would it attract readers previously hostile to the media, and would it blunt any attacks from the Trump administration?Some are skeptical.“You’re trying to pursue readers you’ll never have and in the process pissing off the readers you do have,” Jarvis, the media writer, said of outlets playing it safe on Trump. “That’s the paradox – mass media still believes in the mass media. The challenge for journalism now is for people to feel heard and a separation from the power structures of politics and money.”The only network firmly in a good place appears to be rightwing Fox News, which dominated 24-hour news broadcasting through the election cycle and seems confident of its identity as America returns to life under a Trump presidency.Fox News finished the week of 11-17 November with its highest share of the cable news audience in the network’s 28-year history across multiple categories, while MSNBC saw its lowest-rated week in quarter of a century.For some observers, all this makes for worrying times ahead as America confronts a president with openly autocratic sympathies and a radical rightwing agenda.“The press is going to find itself in an existential battle for its own integrity if it does not decide to confront and challenge Trump top to bottom. There’s no way a truly free press can be neutral about lies and broken civic norms and survive,” said Jim Sleeper, author and retired lecturer in political science at Yale University.“If the populace has decided to trade in its freedom and rights for stability and security that authoritarians always promise, then the press has to make a choice and decide that honest journalists are dissidents.” More

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      in US Politics

      To protect US democracy from tyrants, we must protect the truly free press | Robert Reich

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      Reliable and independent sources of news are now threatened by growing alliances of oligarchs and authoritarians.The mainstream media doesn’t use the term “oligarchy” to describe the billionaires who are using their wealth to enlarge their political power around the world, but that is what is happening.This is why I write for and read the Guardian, and why I’m urgently appealing to you to support it.During the US presidential campaign, legacy mainstream media – who mostly answer to corporate or billionaire ownership – refrained from reporting how incoherent and bizarre Donald Trump was becoming, normalizing and “sanewashing” his increasingly wild utterances even as it reported every minor slip by Joe Biden.The New York Times headlined its report on the September 2024 presidential debate between the president-elect and Kamala Harris – in which Trump issued conspiracy theories about stolen elections, crowd sizes, and Haitian immigrants eating pet cats and dogs – as: Harris and Trump bet on their own sharply contrasting views of America.Trump also used virulent rhetoric towards journalists. He has called the free press “scum” and the “enemy within”. During his campaign, he called for revoking the licenses of television networks and jailing journalists who won’t reveal their anonymous sources.Come 20 January, Trump and his toadies – including billionaires such as Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy – will have total control over the executive branch of the United States government. Trump’s Maga Republicans will be in charge of both chambers of Congress as well.Most members of the US supreme court, some of whom have been beneficiaries of billionaire gifts, have already signaled their willingness to consolidate even more power in Trump’s hands, immunize him from criminal liability for anything he does, and further open the floodgates of big money into US politics.All of this is sending a message from the United States that liberalism’s core tenets, including the rule of law and freedom of the press, are up for grabs.Elsewhere around the world, alliances of economic elites and authoritarians similarly threaten public access to the truth, without which democracy cannot thrive.It’s a vicious cycle: citizens have grown cynical about democracy because decision-making has become dominated by economic elites, and that cynicism has ushered in authoritarians who are even more solicitous of such elites.Trump and his lapdogs have lionized Victor Orbán and Hungary’s Fidesz party, which transformed a once-vibrant democracy into a one-party state, muzzling the media and rewarding the wealthy.Trump’s success will likely encourage other authoritarians, such as Marine Le Pen and her National Rally party in France; Alternative in Germany, or AfD; Italy’s far-right Giorgia Meloni; and radical rightwing parties in the Netherlands and Austria.Trump’s triumph will embolden Russia’s Vladimir Putin – the world’s most dangerous authoritarian oligarch – not only in Ukraine and potentially eastern Europe but also in his worldwide campaign of disinformation seeking to undermine democracies.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEvidence is mounting that Russia and other foreign agents used Musk’s X platform to disrupt the US presidential campaign in favor of Trump. Musk did little to stop them.During the campaign, Musk himself reposted to his 200 million followers a faked version of Harris’s first campaign video with an altered voice track sounding like the vice-president and saying she “does not know the first thing about running the country” and is the “ultimate diversity hire”. Musk tagged the video “amazing”. It received hundreds of millions of views.According to a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, Musk posted at least 50 false election claims on X, which garnered a total of at least 1.2bn views. None had a “community note” from X’s supposed fact-checking system.Rupert Murdoch, another oligarch who champions authoritarianism, has turned his Fox News, Wall Street Journal, and New York Post into outlets of rightwing propaganda, which have amplified Trump’s lies.Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of the Washington Post, prohibited the newspaper from endorsing Kamala Harris. Evidently, he didn’t want to raise Trump’s ire because Bezos’s other businesses depend on government contracts and his largest – Amazon – is already the target of a federal antitrust suit.Bezos’s decision demonstrated that even the possibility of a Trump presidency could force what had been one of the most courageous newspapers in the US to censor itself. Marty Baron, former editor of the Post, called the move “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty”.Citizens concerned about democracy must monitor those in power, act as watchdogs against abuses of power, challenge those abuses, organize and litigate, and sound the alarm about wrongdoing and wrongful policies.But not even the most responsible of citizens can do these things without reliable sources of information. The public doesn’t know what stories have been censored, muted, judged out of bounds, or preemptively not covered by journalists who’d rather not take the risk.In the final weeks before the election, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, blocked his newspaper’s planned endorsement of Harris, prompting the head of the paper’s editorial board to resign. Mariel Garza said she was “not OK with us being silent”, adding: “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up.”Honest people standing up is precisely what resisting authoritarianism and protecting democracy require. Americans and the citizens of other countries must have access to the truth if we have any hope of standing up to tyranny.The Guardian remains a reliable and trustworthy source of news because it is truly independent. That’s why I’m writing this, and why you’re reading it.Unlike other US media organizations, the Guardian cannot be co-opted by the growing alliances of oligarchs and authoritarians. It does not depend for its existence on billionaires or the good graces of a demagogue; it depends on us.Please support the Guardian today. More

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      in Elections

      Resultados electorales y la aguja del Times: esto es lo que necesitas saber

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      Así te traeremos los últimos totales de votos y cálculos del resultado en las contiendas electorales.Llevamos meses preparándonos para informar sobre miles de contiendas federales, estatales y locales el día de las elecciones, entre otras cosas recopilando resultados y otros datos sobre el recuento de votos de los distritos electorales y condados de todo el país. Este año, un equipo de casi 100 periodistas, ingenieros, estadísticos, expertos en datos e investigadores del Times colaboran para ofrecer resultados actualizados al minuto, que se muestran en directo en nytimes.com con una completa gama de mapas y gráficos interactivos para que puedas ver lo que está ocurriendo en las contiendas más importantes de la noche.Esos datos también alimentan la aguja, nuestro modelo estadístico de la noche electoral, que calcula el resultado final basándose en los resultados parciales de las elecciones, ayudando a los lectores a entender qué pasa con los votos que se han contado hasta ahora.La publicación de la aguja en directo la noche electoral depende de sistemas informáticos mantenidos por ingenieros de toda la empresa, algunos de los cuales están actualmente en huelga. La forma en que mostremos nuestra previsión electoral dependerá de esos sistemas, así como de los datos que recibamos, y solo publicaremos una versión en directo de la aguja si estamos seguros de que esos sistemas son estables.Si no podemos transmitir los resultados de la aguja en directo, nuestros periodistas tienen previsto ejecutar su modelo estadístico periódicamente, examinar sus resultados y publicar actualizaciones en nuestro blog en directo sobre lo que vean, dando a nuestros lectores una idea de la situación real de la contienda a lo largo de la noche.Presentamos la aguja en 2016 y la hemos estado perfeccionando desde entonces. A continuación te explicamos cómo funciona:Preguntas sobre la aguja electoral y los datos que la alimentan¿Por qué tener la aguja?¿Cómo funciona la aguja?¿Cómo se lee la aguja?¿Utiliza la aguja Inteligencia Artificial?¿Cómo calcula el Times quién gana en cada contienda?¿De dónde proceden los datos de la aguja y qué tipo de datos recogemos?¿Qué tipo de contacto tenemos con los funcionarios electorales?¿Son frecuentes los errores de datos en la noche electoral? ¿Cómo se detectan y solucionan?¿Por qué a veces se tarda tanto en saber quién ha ganado?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 Elections

      Harris Campaign Ads Use John Kelly’s Words Describing Trump as ‘Fascist’

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      Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign is turning a recording of Donald J. Trump’s former White House chief of staff John F. Kelly, in which he describes the former president as meeting “the general definition of fascist,” into two stark new ads.The ads are the latest attempt by Ms. Harris, in the final two weeks, to turn the 2024 race into a referendum on Mr. Trump and his fitness for office. Ms. Harris delivered a televised statement at her residence this week after Mr. Kelly’s comments were published, saying they were sounding an alarm to the nation.The ads, titled “A Warning,” are scheduled to immediately go into the Harris campaign’s rotation of television and digital advertising, a campaign official said, adding that they would be targeted in particular at markets with larger populations of veterans.And Ms. Harris underscored the message at a CNN town hall on Wednesday when she herself also called Mr. Trump a “fascist.”Both the 30-second and the 60-second ads begin with a black screen and a pulsating, alarm-like sound as the words, “An unprecedented warning …” are typed onto the screen.The text then identifies Mr. Kelly, Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff and a four-star Marine general, before cutting to a recording of Mr. Kelly’s recent interview with a reporter for The New York Times, Michael S. Schmidt.“Do you think he’s a fascist?” Mr. Schmidt asks.The 30-second version compresses Mr. Kelly’s response: “He certainly falls into the general definition of a fascist: using the military to go after American citizens.”The 60-second version quotes Mr. Kelly at greater length: “He certainly falls into the general definition of a fascist. It’s a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader. The former president — he is certainly an authoritarian. Using the military to go after American citizens is a very bad thing.”Both ads also include a clip of Mr. Kelly quoting Mr. Trump as saying, “Hitler did some good things, too.”The pulsating alarm sound continues throughout both ads, with the same red text typing at the end: “Donald Trump is unhinged. Unstable. In pursuit of unchecked power.”Mr. Trump has attacked Mr. Kelly since his public comments, such as in an interview on Fox News on Thursday in Arizona.“I fired him,” Mr. Trump said, according to a transcript provided by Fox News. “He made a statement that I’m like Hitler. It’s — just couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s just the opposite, actually.” More

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      in Elections

      5 conclusiones de la entrevista de Vance con The New York Times

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      Cuando se le preguntó si creía que las elecciones de 2020 habían sido robadas, Vance eludió responder repetidamente. Y defendió el sentimiento detrás de su comentario “señoras con gatos y sin hijos”, aunque se arrepintió de su elección de palabras.JD Vance sigue participando en la campaña.El candidato republicano a la vicepresidencia y senador por Ohio en su primer mandato habla con los periodistas en los mítines electorales. Está agendando entrevistas en cadenas de televisión y por cable. Y le concedió una entrevista a The New York Times.Algo ha cambiado en la política estadounidense cuando es digno de mención que un candidato se enfrente de manera voluntaria a una pregunta tras otra sin tener un guion. Pero así estamos.En su más reciente participación con los medios de comunicación, Vance se sentó con Lulu Garcia-Navarro, copresentadora de The Interview, un pódcast de The New York Times que presenta una conversación de una hora con un único invitado cada sábado.A continuación, ofrecemos cinco conclusiones de la entrevista de Vance:Sus críticos le llaman débil. Él dice que es complejoParece poco probable que Donald Trump se describa a sí mismo como una persona reflexiva. Vance no puede parar.La entrevista comienza con García-Navarro diciéndole a Vance que, mientras se preparaba para su reunión, surgió una pregunta persistente entre la gente: “¿Cuál JD se va a presentar?”.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 Elections

      Most Voters Have Been Offended by Trump. It’s Not Always a Deal Breaker.

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      The vast majority of voters across the United States say they have been offended at some point by former President Donald J. Trump. But a sizable number of those voters say that has not stopped them from supporting him.Overall, 70 percent of voters said that the former president had ever offended them, according to new polling from The New York Times and Siena College.But big differences emerge when voters were asked when they were offended.Nearly half — 46 percent — of the group said that they had been offended recently. Ms. Harris won that group by a margin of more than 80 percentage points.But it was a different story among the 23 percent who said that they had been offended by Mr. Trump, but further in the past. Mr. Trump won that group by roughly 40 percentage points.Donald Trump wins voters who said they found him offensive, but not recently, by a wide margin Has Donald Trump ever said anything that you found offensive?

      Source: A New York Times/Siena College poll of 3,385 voters nationwide conducted from Sept. 29 to Oct. 6By The New York TimesThe question of offensive rhetoric has been a feature of Mr. Trump’s candidacy as long as he has been running for president. He began his first run for the presidency in 2015 by claiming that Mexico was sending “rapists” into America. He won that election after a tape surfaced in which bragged about grabbing women’s genitals. More recently he falsely claimed that immigrants in Ohio were eating people’s pets.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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      A Cryptic Letter With a Clear Warning

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      A domestic terrorist group sent a note to The New York Times admitting to detonating a bomb in Queens.Nearly 50 years ago, on Jan. 29, 1975, a bomb exploded inside the State Department’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., damaging the building but causing no injuries. A bomb was discovered that same day at a federal office building in Oakland, Calif., and was safely detonated.The acts were part of a spree of violence by a far-left militant group, Weather Underground, a splinter group of the Students for a Democratic Society, which opposed the Vietnam War. (The group took its name from lyrics written by Bob Dylan — “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” — in the song “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”) In a manifesto, the Weather Underground called for “the destruction of U.S. imperialism and the achievement of a classless world: world communism.”In late 1970, about a year after the group’s formation, The New York Times received a cryptic letter dated Oct. 9. Painted across the note was a red, five-pointed star, a symbol for Communism. The letter was signed in large cursive letters: Weatherman.That letter is currently stored in the “morgue,” The Times’s vast clippings archive.The letter makes reference to “slave ships of the twentieth century” and says that “with rallies and riots, with marches and Molotovs, kids in New York City and around the country will continue the battle.”Most startling is that the group claimed credit for an attack in Queens: “Last night as part of an international conspiracy we blew up the Long Island City Criminal Courthouse,” the letter reads. The explosion, which occurred on the third floor, heavily damaged the interior of the gray stone building.The group would ultimately claim responsibility for more than 25 bombings, according to the F.B.I., including at the Capitol building in March 1971. The group eventually splintered as the Vietnam War came to an end, disbanding in the late ’70s.In a 2020 guest essay for Times Opinion, Mark Rudd, a community organizer who once belonged to the Weather Underground, described his time with the group. “We didn’t realize that the violence we claimed we hated had infected our souls,” he wrote. “At the time, I’m not sure we’d have cared.” More