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      Taliban Talks With U.N. Go On Despite Alarm Over Exclusion of Women

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      The meeting is the first between the Taliban and a United Nations-led conference of global envoys who are seeking to engage the Afghan government on critical issues.Taliban officials attended a rare, United Nations-led conference of global envoys to Afghanistan on Sunday, the first such meeting Taliban representatives have agreed to engage in, after organizers said Afghan women would be excluded from the talks.The two-day conference in Doha, Qatar, is the third of its kind. It is part of a United Nations-led effort, known as the “Doha process,” started in May 2023. It is meant to develop a unified approach for international engagement with Afghanistan. Envoys from around 25 countries and regional organizations, including the European Union, the United States, Russia and China, are attending. Taliban officials were not invited to the first meeting and refused to attend the second meeting, held in February, after objecting to the inclusion of Afghan civil society groups that attended.The conference has drawn a fierce backlash in recent days after U.N. officials announced that Afghan women would not participate in discussions with Taliban officials. Human rights groups and Afghan women’s groups have slammed the decision to exclude them as too severe a concession by the U.N. to persuade the Taliban to engage in the talks. The decision to exclude women sets “a deeply damaging precedent” and risks “legitimatizing their gender-based institutional system of oppression,” Agnès Callamard, the secretary general of Amnesty International, said in a statement referring to the Taliban’s policies toward women. “The international community must adopt a clear and united stance: The rights of women and girls in Afghanistan are nonnegotiable.”Since seizing power from the U.S.-backed government in 2021, Taliban authorities have systematically rolled back women’s rights, effectively erasing women from public life. Women and girls are barred from getting education beyond primary school and banned from most employment outside of education and health care, and they cannot travel significant distances without a male guardian.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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      How Democrats Got Here With Biden

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      What Kamala Harris, Jaime Harrison, Ron Klain and other party leaders have said about the liabilities of their candidate’s age.Listen to and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeListen: How Democrats Got Here With BidenProminent party members on concerns about age.As you may have heard, Thursday night was the first debate between President Biden and former president Donald J. Trump. In short, it was not a great night for Mr. Biden.The president’s debate performance triggered significant panic among top Democrats, who for months have been dismissing concerns about Mr. Biden’s age.So, how is this happening? Despite all the concerns polls showed about age, how has the Democratic Party arrived at this moment?That’s a line of inquiry The Run-Up has been putting to senior Democratic leaders for the past 18 months. And we wanted to revisit some of those conversations now in a special episode.They include our interviews with Vice President Harris, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison and Ron Klain, Mr. Biden’s former White House chief of staff.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesAbout ‘The Run-Up’“The Run-Up” is your guide to understanding the 2024 election. Through on-the-ground reporting and conversations with colleagues from The New York Times, newsmakers and voters across the country, our host, Astead W. Herndon, takes us beyond the horse race to explore how we came to this moment in American politics. New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      Join Us: The Loopholes of Hawaii’s Pay-to-Play Law

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      A joint investigation examined the role money plays in politics in Hawaii. Hear how journalists put the story together in a livestreamed event on July 10. Hawaii is reeling from one of the largest corruption scandals in its history. Former State Senator J. Kalani English and former State Representative Ty Cullen pleaded guilty in February 2022 to accepting tens of thousands of dollars in bribes during their time in office. Starting as early as 2014, and continuing until at least 2020, state and local politicians raked in campaign contributions at late-night fund-raising parties.Hawaii had passed an anti-corruption law in 2005 that was billed as one of the nation’s most ambitious efforts to end pay-to-play government contracting.Join journalists from The Times and Honolulu Civil Beat, a nonprofit newsroom, for a hybrid discussion about how they uncovered systematic failures in Hawaii’s reform efforts at 10:30 a.m. Hawaii time (4:30 p.m. Eastern time) on Wednesday, July 10. Register here.Blaze Lovell, the reporter, and Dean Baquet, who edited the investigation, will discuss the project, which included an analysis of hundreds of thousands of campaign contributions and more than 70,000 state contracts. The conversation will be moderated by Patti Epler, the editor and general manager of Civil Beat.To register for the event and to submit a question for the panelists, visit Civil Beat’s event page. A link to the recording will be sent to everyone who signs up. The event draws on reporting from The Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship, an initiative that gives local journalists a year to produce investigations about their communities. More

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      Here’s the Biden-Trump Debate We Want on Thursday

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      I asked what you want moderators to ask Biden and Trump at the debate. You had many thoughts.Tomorrow night, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash of CNN have a big job: asking two unpopular men who have been president what they would do with a second term.The stakes could not be higher. President Biden and former President Donald Trump have starkly different visions for the presidency and the future of the country. This will be their first meeting since 2020, and they don’t have another planned until September.I don’t know if we’ll get the debate we want, or just the debate we deserve, but I do know that the questions Tapper and Bash choose to ask really matter. So we at On Politics would humbly and helpfully like to offer some ideas. Your ideas.Last week, I asked readers to tell me the questions you hope to hear at the debate, and I received hundreds of insightful and occasionally trollish responses. It’s clear you are hungry for a debate about issues that aren’t getting a lot of attention on the campaign trail. You’re also looking for Biden and Trump to convince you why, in their second go-round, you should get excited about them. And you want both of them to address their own ages, and not just each other’s.Below, I’ve laid out some of the questions that stood out to me most, with some small edits for clarity and style. Hope you’re reading, Jake and Dana. No need to thank us!Pressing two presidentsThe 2024 election is a contest between two men who have a cold, hard record of being president, which many of you hope the moderators will dig into. James Hall, an independent voter from Colorado, offered a question I liked for its directness.What have you done that makes you think you deserve to be the president of the United States again?Anne McKelvey, a lifelong Pennsylvanian, wants to know about both men’s regrets.What do you feel was your biggest mistake during your presidency?Trump and the future of democracyMany of you want the stakes for democracy to be clearly spelled out onstage — especially when it comes to Trump’s plans for a second term. You want him to be asked directly about his promise to be a “dictator” on Day 1, and about my colleagues’ reporting that he plans to use the government to seek revenge on his political opponents.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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      J.D. Vance Says He’ll Be Disappointed if Trump Doesn’t Pick Him for V.P.

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      Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio has long been considered one of Donald J. Trump’s top running mate choices and worked as hard as anyone to win the job — raising money for the campaign, speaking with a seemingly endless stream of cable news reporters and even sitting in the Manhattan courtroom with the former president to demonstrate his support.Now, as Mr. Trump’s increasingly theatrical selection process enters its final phase, Mr. Vance acknowledged Wednesday that he would feel a tinge of dejection if he were not the pick.“I’m human, right?” Mr. Vance said in an interview on Fox News. “So when you know this thing is a possibility, if it doesn’t happen, there is certainly going to be a little bit of disappointment.”Mr. Trump has said he would announce his pick closer to the Republican National Convention next month, but his campaign has fed speculation that an announcement could happen as soon as this week.Mr. Vance and other top contenders for the job, including Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, have been invited to join Mr. Trump in Atlanta on Thursday for the former president’s first debate this year with President Biden, campaign aides said. Mr. Vance’s interview is the first of a series announced by Fox News on Tuesday that will feature a handful of the leading prospects. Mr. Burgum and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina will also appear in the coming days to essentially pitch themselves to viewers on their qualifications to be vice president, alongside their significant others.Mr. Vance and his wife, Usha, sat for an interview at their home in Ohio. When asked about what issue she may focus on if she became “second lady,” Ms. Vance laughed off the question, saying it was “getting a little ahead of ourselves there.”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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      France’s Far-Right National Rally Rebranded Itself. Here’s How.

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      Many long considered Marine Le Pen’s party too extreme to be anywhere close to power. Now, the party could win a parliamentary election — and fill the prime minister’s seat.For decades, the National Rally was the pariah of French politics — deemed so dangerous that politicians from other parties refused to engage with its members. How much that has changed became starkly apparent this month: The R.N., as the party is known by its initials in French, dominated the elections for the European Parliament, crushing President Emmanuel Macron’s party and winning a third of the votes in France. Mr. Macron soon called a surprise snap election for the powerful National Assembly, and polls suggest that the National Rally might be poised to win those, too.Jordan Bardella, the party’s president, is jockeying to become the country’s next prime minister — something that just 10 years ago would have been unthinkable. He is scheduled to face off against two adversaries, including Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, in a much-anticipated debate on Tuesday night.If his party manages a big win in the election, Mr. Bardella could become prime minister, name cabinet members and derail much of Mr. Macron’s domestic agenda. (Historically, the president still sets foreign and defense policy.)How did the National Rally evolve, rebranding itself so fully that it is now closer than ever to such a position of power?The National Rally’s founder was openly racist.Originally called the National Front, the party was founded in 1972 as the political arm of New Order, whose members believed democracy was doomed to fail. It included former Nazi soldiers, Vichy régime collaborators and former members of a terrorist organization that carried out attacks to prevent Algeria’s independence from French colonial rule.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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      ‘Is There Any Chance He Can Sit on a Camel?’ A Senator’s Wife Wanted to Know.

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      An aide to Senator Robert Menendez testified that she had been asked to consult with an Egyptian intelligence officer who had befriended Nadine Menendez.In March 2019, an aide to Senator Robert Menendez drafted a letter that used strong language to criticize the president of Egypt and the country’s human rights record. Mr. Menendez declined to sign it.Mr. Menendez, then the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he wanted to try a less confrontational approach, the aide, Sarah Arkin, testified on Monday at the senator’s bribery trial.“We’ve been going after them for so long on human rights — have been really out there publicly criticizing them — and it hasn’t really changed anything on the ground,” Ms. Arkin, a senior staff member with the committee, said Mr. Menendez had told her.Instead, Mr. Menendez said he wanted “to be a little less publicly critical and do more private and quiet engagement,” Ms. Arkin said.Ms. Arkin’s testimony came at the start of the seventh week of the senator’s trial in Manhattan federal court. Mr. Menendez, 70, is charged with steering aid and weapons to Egypt in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes as part of a wide-ranging and yearslong conspiracy.He has strenuously maintained his innocence, and as Mr. Menendez was leaving court on Monday he defended his record related to Egypt and its president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. “No one has been a harsher critic of Egypt,” Mr. Menendez said. “No one has been more persistent a critic of President el-Sisi on the question of human rights, democracy, rule of law.”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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      Iran’s Onerous Hijab Law for Women Is Now a Campaign Issue

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      In a sign that a women-led movement has gained ground, all of the men running for president have distanced themselves from the harsh tactics used to enforce mandatory hijab.Iranian officials insisted for decades that the law requiring women to cover their hair and dress modestly was sacrosanct and not even worth discussion. They dismissed the struggle by women who challenged the law as a symptom of Western meddling. Now, as Iran holds a presidential election this week, the issue of mandatory hijab, as the hair covering is known, has become a hot campaign topic. And all six of the men running, five of them conservative, have sought to distance themselves from the methods of enforcing the law, which include violence, arrests and monetary fines.“Elections aside, politics aside, under no circumstances should we treat Iranian women with such cruelty,” Mustafa Pourmohammadi, a conservative presidential candidate and cleric with senior roles in intelligence, said in a round-table discussion on state television last week. He has also said that government officials should be punished over the hijab law because it was their duty to educate women about why they should wear hijab, not violently enforce it.The hijab has long been a symbol of religious identity but has also been a political tool in Iran. And women have resisted the law, in different ways, ever since it went into effect after the Islamic Revolution in 1979.It is unlikely that the law will be annulled, and it remains unclear whether a new president can soften enforcement. Different administrations have adopted looser or stricter approaches to hijab. Ebrahim Raisi, the president whose death in a helicopter crash in May prompted emergency elections, had imposed some of the harshest crackdowns on women.Still, some women’s rights activists and analysts in Iran say forcing the issue to the table during elections is in itself an accomplishment. It shows that the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement of civil disobedience, which began nearly two years ago, has become too big to ignore.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