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    Jan. 6 Defendants Are Already Angling for Pardons From Trump

    The president-elect said during the campaign that he would grant clemency to some of those who took part in the assault by his supporters on the Capitol nearly four years ago.The legal consequences of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s victory start with the likelihood that the cases against him will sputter out but could also extend to the cases of hundreds of his supporters who are being — or have been — prosecuted for storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump repeatedly promised to pardon some of the 1,500 people charged in connection with Jan. 6, sometimes suggesting that his clemency might extend to leaders of far-right groups like the Proud Boys and to other defendants who assaulted police officers.It remains unclear whether or how fully he will fulfill those vows. But should he issue wide-ranging pardons, it would amount to a repudiation of the largest criminal investigation ever undertaken by the Justice Department and damage, perhaps fatally, efforts by prosecutors to seek accountability for a violent mob attack on the lawful transfer of presidential power.Already, some Jan. 6 defendants are excitedly expressing hope that Mr. Trump might strip them of convictions or free them from prison when he takes office.Only hours after the election was called for Mr. Trump early Wednesday, one convicted rioter, Christopher Carnell, asked a federal judge to push back a hearing in his case, saying he “expected” to receive clemency.“Throughout his campaign, President-elect Trump made multiple clemency promises to the Jan. 6 defendants, particularly to those who were nonviolent participants,” Mr. Carnell’s lawyers wrote. “Mr. Carnell, who was an 18-year-old nonviolent entrant into the Capitol on Jan. 6, is expecting to be relieved of the criminal prosecution that he is currently facing when the new administration takes office.”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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    What the Collapse of Germany’s Ruling Coalition Means

    After decades of relative stability, the country has entered a new era of political fragmentation and will hold new elections at a precarious time.The collapse of its governing coalition is an extraordinary moment for Germany, a country known for stable governments. It has happened only twice before in the 75 years since the modern state was founded.But like a marriage that has finally ended after years of fighting, the spectacular breakup on Wednesday night of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition was expected by most and welcomed by many.A recent national poll found that a majority of Germans wanted to end the “traffic light” coalition, named for the colors of the parties that made it up — red for the Social Democratic Party, yellow for the pro-business Free Democratic Party and green for the Greens. Only 14 percent still had confidence in the coalition, according to the same poll.Although the opposition is pushing for Mr. Scholz to end the government sooner, Wednesday’s announcement will very likely lead to early elections in March, at a precarious time for Germany both domestically and internationally.Here’s what we know about the collapse of the coalition.How did we get here?On Wednesday night, Mr. Scholz fired his finance minister, Christian Lindner, who is the head of the Free Democrats, over disagreements about the 2025 budget and the economy in general. That precipitated the end of the coalition.The coalition was initially both successful and popular. But a constitutional court ruling late in 2023, barring the government from repurposing finances left over from the pandemic, spelled the beginning of the end.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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    Expecting Clemency From Trump, Jan. 6 Defendant Requests Sentencing Delay

    A federal judge promptly denied Christopher Carnell’s request, which was filed hours after President Donald J. Trump won re-election.A North Carolina man who participated in the 2021 Capitol insurrection requested on Wednesday to have his sentencing delayed because he expects President-elect Donald J. Trump to grant Jan. 6 defendants like him clemency, court records show.The request from the man, Christopher Carnell, 22, of Cary, N.C., was filed hours after Mr. Trump defeated Kamala Harris, and it was promptly denied by Judge Beryl A. Howell of U.S. District Court in Washington, according to court records.In February, Mr. Carnell was convicted of felony obstruction and four misdemeanors for his participation in the insurrection, which included entering the United States Capitol, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. Mr. Carnell, who was 18 at the time of the riot, is scheduled to appear in court on Friday so that prosecutors and the defense “can present status arguments,” according to court records.“As of today,” Mr. Carnell’s lawyer, Marina Medvin, wrote, “Mr. Carnell is now awaiting further information from the Office of the President-elect regarding the timing and expected scope of clemency actions relevant to his case.”While campaigning, Mr. Trump repeatedly said that he would pardon people facing charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol. Ms Medvin wrote that her client “is expecting to be relieved of the criminal prosecution that he is currently facing when the new administration takes office.”Mr. Carnell entered the Capitol with David Worth Bowman, 23, of Raleigh, N.C. The two men climbed through the scaffolding on the northwest side of the Capitol, entered the building and discussed, photographed and shared images of documents taken off a senator’s desk, prosecutors said.Both men were found guilty of felony obstruction and several misdemeanor charges, including disorderly conduct in a Capitol building.Ms. Medvin did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday. Lawyers for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington also did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.A lawyer for Mr. Bowman did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Wednesday. He is also to be sentenced on Friday.A courtroom deputy for Judge Howell did not immediately respond to a phone call seeking comment about her decision to deny the delay request. No explanation for the denial of the delay request was immediately accessible in court records.Nearly 1,000 “defendants have had their cases adjudicated and received sentences for their criminal activity on Jan. 6,” prosecutors said earlier this year. Mr. Trump will be sworn in as the 47th president of the United States on Jan. 20, 2025.Sheelagh McNeill More

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    Her absentee ballot never arrived. So she flew from Chicago to Pennsylvania to vote.

    Helen Wu, a 21-year-old senior at the University of Chicago, requested a mail-in ballot from her home in Montgomery County, Pa., on Sept. 10.It never arrived. For nearly two months, she went back and forth with election officials in Pennsylvania in increasing desperation, filing additional requests, until this Monday, when she spent hundreds of dollars on a last-minute plane ticket to Pennsylvania to cast her vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.She is not alone. The New York Times spoke with two other voters in Montgomery County, and a third in Philadelphia, who had similar experiences and had to rush back to Pennsylvania at the last minute to vote.Ms. Wu provided 12 emails documenting her efforts to obtain a mail-in ballot, as well as screenshots from Pennsylvania’s voter portal. They show that she requested her ballot on Sept. 10, that it was marked as sent, and then that it was marked as “CANC – UNDELIVERABLE.”She requested another one, but the request was rejected because she had already requested the first, “undeliverable” one. That happened multiple times. After several attempts to contact the Montgomery County voter services offices, she heard back from someone who told her she needed to file a form to cancel the first request. She did that on Oct. 28 — less than five hours after being told to — but did not receive confirmation that the cancellation form had been received until Oct. 30.On Monday, Nov. 4, now thoroughly panicked, she tried to contact the county voter services office again. This time, she received a response that her ballot would arrive within “24 to 48 hours” — too late for her to return it in time.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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    La victoria de Trump es un triunfo para Elon Musk y la política de los grandes capitales

    Es difícil separar el trabajo de campaña de Musk de otras influencias que llevaron a Trump a la Casa Blanca. Su papel podría inspirar iniciativas similares y contribuir a transformar las campañas modernas.En la estridente reunión de la noche electoral del martes, Elon Musk se sentó a dos asientos de Donald Trump, dispuesto a atribuirse mucho del mérito de su decisiva victoria presidencial.“Mi comité independiente de campaña, America PAC, mejoró enormemente la campaña republicana en el terreno en los estados disputados”, dijo Musk al comentarista conservador Tucker Carlson en una entrevista en Mar-a-Lago, la residencia y club privado de Trump en Florida. Publicó un meme desí mismo en el Despacho Oval para sus 203 millones de seguidores en X, su plataforma de redes sociales.Su vuelta de celebración fue el punto culminante de un esfuerzo que comenzó hace solo seis meses y que dependía de una arriesgada apuesta: el nuevo comité independiente de campaña de Musk dirigió eficazmente la operación de captación de votos de Trump en los estados más disputados, y Trump confió una función crucial de la campaña a un neófito en política.Es difícil separar el trabajo de campaña de Musk de otras influencias que llevaron a Trump a la Casa Blanca. Pero no cabe duda de que la elección fue una victoria no solo para Musk, sino también para la política del gran capital: un donante ultra rico aprovechó el cambiante sistema de financiación de campañas de Estados Unidos para inclinar la balanza como nunca antes.Musk financió casi en solitario una campaña que costó más de 175 millones de dólares. Sus representantes tocaron cerca de 11 millones de puertas en los estados disputados desde agosto, incluidos 1,8 millones en Míchigan y 2,3 millones en Pensilvania, según personas con conocimiento del asunto. Se gastaron otros 30 millones de dólares en un gran programa de correo directo y unos 22 millones en publicidad digital, incluso en medios afines a Trump como Barstool Sports.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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    Arab American Voters in Dearborn, Michigan, Heard Trump’s Case 

    After supporting Joe Biden in 2020, the majority-Arab American city outside Detroit delivered an unlikely win for Donald Trump, who promised to bring peace to the Middle East.Ameen Almudhari was one of thousands of people in the majority-Arab community of Dearborn, Mich., who helped Joe Biden win the city and defeat Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.Four years later, Mr. Almudhari had had enough.This week, he joined thousands of other Dearborn residents in voting for Mr. Trump, helping him score a stunning win in a place that seemed an unlikely source of support in the former president’s bid to return to the White House.Standing next to his 10-year-old son outside an elementary school on the north side of Dearborn on Tuesday evening, Mr. Almudhari, 33, explained his change of heart, part of a remarkable turnabout in Dearborn, which is just outside Detroit.He was, he said, fed up with Mr. Biden’s support of Israel and Ukraine and said the death and destruction being underwritten by the United States drove his decision to back Mr. Trump.“The first time we vote for Joe Biden, but what we see right now, he didn’t stop the genocide in Gaza,” said Mr. Almudhari, a Yemeni American, who faulted the president for spending American money to support the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. His son, Khaled, interrupted him with a smiling comment: “Trump will end the war!”Indeed, Mr. Trump has said as much, and the promise was among a host of reasons cited by voters in Dearborn for the wave of support from Arab and Muslim Americans for Mr. Trump.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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    Kamala Harris Wears a Dark Suit and Weary Smile in Concession Speech

    In her concession speech, Kamala Harris offered an image for a long fight.Kamala Harris speaking at Howard University was to be an image for history: a record of the first female president, not to mention the first Black female president and the first president of South Asian descent, giving her victory speech. Instead, what turned out to be her concession speech became the coda to an unprecedented election; the end of one story, rather than the beginning of another.That did not mean that Ms. Harris was any less a pioneer, or a role model, in the moment. Even if what she was modeling was how to make over the public face of defeat.Standing before the red bricks and the white columns that provide the backdrop for Howard commencements, Ms. Harris wore a businesslike pantsuit in a muddy burgundy that read, through the screen, as almost purple (interpret that as you will). The jacket was buttoned, an American flag pin bright against one lapel, and the pants were cut with a bit of a flare at the calf. With it, she wore her usual pumps, pearl earrings and a satin blouse in the same eggplant shade, complete with a cravat, or ascot-like tie. If there was a telling detail, that was it.The cravat is a cousin of the floppy bow Ms. Harris has often worn at major public occasions — the one that seemed to symbolize both tradition and subversion, men’s wear and a woman’s place, and to acknowledge that despite the fact that she had never put gender at the center of her candidacy, it was there all the same.Ms. Harris paired her suit with a cravat, an accessory that hearkened back to history.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesIn the context of her concession speech, the cravat hearkened back to history — her own and that of the women and the politicians who came before her — and in that context, it represented, as she said in that speech, the idea that some fights were long. That this one had been going on for decades (even centuries) and would continue afterward. It was, in that way, a symbol of both a promise and a lament.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