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      in Elections

      With Hours Left in the Primary, the Stars Come Out for Mamdani

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      Celebrities like Lorde, Emily Ratajkowski, Cynthia Nixon and Bowen Yang have expressed support for Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayor’s race.State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, whose insurgent candidacy in New York’s Democratic mayoral primary was defined in part by an adept use of social media, has received a veritable buffet of endorsements in the race’s final days from celebrities with large online followings.The latest nod came from Emily Ratajkowski, a model and actress with more than 29 million followers on Instagram, who posted a video Tuesday with Mr. Mamdani. Wearing a “Hot Girls For Zohran” shirt, Ms. Ratajkowski, a longtime supporter of Bernie Sanders, reminded New Yorkers of the tight margins that decided the last Democratic primary, in 2021. She added that younger voters would be pivotal in Tuesday’s outcome and encouraged her New York City followers to go to the polls“We know it’s hot, but the time is now,” she said.Like Mr. Sanders, who recently endorsed him, Mr. Mamdani has benefited from being perceived as the candidate of New York’s cool kids, who have embraced his message that government must urgently address the city’s affordability crisis. The backing of stars like the pop star Lorde and the “Saturday Night Live” cast members Sarah Sherman and Bowen Yang has excited Mr. Mamdani’s supporters as the candidate has surged to a close second place in the polls behind former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a moderate.On Tuesday, Ms. Sherman participated in a phone bank for Mr. Mamdani along with Cynthia Nixon, the actress and former candidate for New York governor. Ms. Nixon has held fund-raisers for Mr. Mamdani and has regularly slammed Mr. Cuomo, whom she ran against in 2018.Other high-profile figures who have backed Mr. Mamdani include the singer Maggie Rogers, the actress and activist Laverne Cox, the comedian John Early and the leftist podcaster Stavros Halkias, who lives in Astoria, Queens, which is part of Mr. Mamdani’s Assembly district.Whether these endorsements will translate to votes is unclear. At the very least, they serve as a stark reminder of the generational divide that has played out in the race, as Mr. Mamdani, 33, has fired up young progressives while Mr. Cuomo, 67, seeks to hold onto the support of older voters. Several notable older New Yorkers have backed Mr. Cuomo, including the former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, the singer Billy Joel and the fashion designers Michael Kors and Tory Burch. More

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      in US Politics

      Welcome to a new ‘gloomcycle’ of news. Here’s how to stop compulsive scrolling | Margaret Sullivan

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      The threat of a world war. Political assassinations. Federal raids on unsuspecting migrants.There seems to be no end to terrifying news these days. In fact, it comes at us so unceasingly that numbness can set in. Or even depression or melancholy, like a black cloud over every part of our lives.The “gloomcycle” is what Rachel Janfaza, who founded the gen Z-oriented site known as the Up and Up, has dubbed what’s going on. In a recent piece, she quoted one 23-year-old from Alabama: “I am really overwhelmed by all of the bad news I am seeing right now.”Whatever generation we’re from, that’s a familiar sensation.The question is, how to deal with it? After all, particularly because of Donald Trump’s chaotic ways, it shows no signs of slowing down. And while it’s important not to tune out altogether, it’s also important to stay grounded.Where’s the balance?I’m certainly not a life coach but as someone whose work requires me to stay connected and informed, I’ve developed some coping resources.Here are three recommendations to manage the firehose of bad news and to protect your spiritual and emotional health while still staying engaged in the world.Set thoughtful limits. Can you put your phone in another room or in a drawer for a period of each day? Can you pledge never to sleep with it nearby? I have a friend who has made a pact with her spouse to have an hour after waking and an hour before going to bed in which they don’t talk about current events, and certainly never utter the name of the 47th president.Can you decide not to be on social media during significant hours of the day? And maybe even to ignore your email unless it’s during loosely defined business hours? (This is an especially tough one for me; I always want to respond immediately, which only elicits another response.)Engage in self-care. Maybe you go to the gym or for a run. Maybe it’s a bubble bath. Maybe it’s listening, without any other distractions, to Mozart – or Jon Batiste. For me, it’s daily yoga (the challenging ashtanga practice) followed by meditation. And it’s reading fiction or memoirs unrelated to politics – most recently, Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, Fredrik Backman’s My Friends, Molly Jong-Fast’s How to Lose Your Mother, and, in galley form, Susan Orlean’s not-yet-published memoir, Joyride.A friend told me recently that she’s rereading all six novels of Jane Austen as an antidote to these fractious times. I like to read books in print, not on a device, since screens are already too dominant in my life. Can you slow down enough to give your full attention to literature for an hour? It will help, and it will also help to build back your undoubtedly frayed attention span.Rely on trusted voices and sources of news. I think the Guardian is one of these, and I would think so even if I didn’t write here almost every week. I know a lot of people who count on the perspective of Heather Cox Richardson, the history professor who writes a daily newsletter, Letters from an American. Robert Reich, a former labor secretary, is one of my go-to sources of perspective, as are a few columnists, including Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Lydia Polgreen at the New York Times.While traveling in Asia recently, I read the Japan Times and the international edition of the New York Times each morning; they were bundled together and delivered to my hotel room. There was something about that well-organized news – delivered in old-fashioned print form – that was incredibly calming. A prominently displayed column about Israel by Thomas Friedman gave me more context than a freaked-out social media thread, no matter how smart. While it’s unlikely that we’re going to return to reading a print newspaper as a major news source, the daily pacing and the sensible curation of what’s important has a lot to recommend it.In Chris Hayes’s recent book, The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource, the political commentator identifies what’s going on for all of us – and the dangers. Hayes confessed in a Vox interview that despite his knowledge about the “attention economy” and its personal costs, he still struggles.“I’ve written a recovery memoir,” Hayes joked that he told his wife, “and I’m still drinking.”The bad news will keep coming. As citizens, we need to know what’s happening so we can act – in the voting booth, at a protest rally, in conversations with our neighbors or loved ones.But that doesn’t mean constant immersion. A little of the gloomcycle goes a long way.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      in Elections

      U.S. to Review Social Media Posts of Student and Scholar Visa Applicants

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      The State Department is restarting the processing of visa applications from students and visiting scholars, but is screening for “hostility” toward the United States.The State Department plans to review the social media accounts of foreign citizens who apply for student and visiting scholar visas as it resumes processing those applications. Applicants will be screened for perceived “hostility” toward the United States, and they will be asked to make their social media accounts “public” for the review, State Department officials said on Wednesday.All applications for F, M and J nonimmigrant visas, which are for scholarly exchanges and research, will be reviewed, the officials said.Consular officers at missions overseas are being told to look for “any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions or founding principles of the United States.” The State Department did not provide further details on how officers would define that criteria. The agency issued the guidelines after halting the processing of student and visiting scholar visas for nearly a month.The new policy appears to be the latest prong in the Trump administration’s broad assault on universities, which is focused on trying to tamp down liberal thought at the institutions. Some of President Trump’s aides say American universities need to embrace more conservative ideas and people. 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

      What Is a ‘Fridge Cigarette’? A New Term for Diet Coke Gains Traction.

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      The click of the can, the sound of the bubbles: The internet is reframing the humble soda as an indulgent escape.Two Sundays ago, Rachel Reno relaxed in a park in New York with a sandwich, a bag of chips and a fridge cigarette.While lounging, she posted a video of herself, with the caption: “overheard someone call Diet Coke a ‘fridge cigarette’ and nothing’s been more true to me since.”She cracked open the can and took a sip.“I feel like it’s one of those things that doesn’t need a lot of explanation,” Ms. Reno, a freelance creator in New York, said in an interview. She first heard the alternative name for a can of diet soda from a co-worker at her previous job at an advertising agency. Those who get it know that “the crack of the can is like the spark of a lighter,” she said. Then comes the sparkly sound of fizzing bubbles and the mouthfeel of that first hit, and suddenly “all the worries and cares in the world go away.”Crucially, having a soda is the equivalent of stepping outside for a few minutes for a smoke break. It’s an excuse to “take a moment,” Ms. Reno said.

      @reallyrachelreno time for a crispy ciggy in the summer @Diet Coke #fyp #dietcoke ♬ Cruel Summer – Taylor Swift Ms. Reno’s video in the park has been viewed more than three million times and received almost 300,000 likes, with many people commenting on how accurate that term is. It has inspired others to use the expression, capturing not just a shift in perception of soda and cigarettes but also a collective search for a breather, as Casey Lewis, founder and writer of the internet-culture newsletter After School, described it.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

      Real Risk to Youth Mental Health Is ‘Addictive Use,’ Not Screen Time Alone, Study Finds

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      Researchers found children with highly addictive use of phones, video games or social media were two to three times as likely to have thoughts of suicide or to harm themselves.As Americans scramble to respond to rising rates of suicidal behavior among youth, many policymakers have locked in on an alarming metric: the number of hours a day that American children spend glued to a glowing screen.But a study published on Wednesday in the medical journal JAMA, which followed more than 4,000 children across the country, arrived at a surprising conclusion: Longer screen time at age 10 was not associated with higher rates of suicidal behavior four years later.Instead, the authors found, the children at higher risk for suicidal behaviors were those who told researchers their use of technology had become “addictive” — that they had trouble putting it down, or felt the need to use it more and more. Some children exhibited addictive behavior even if their screen time was relatively low, they said.The researchers found addictive behavior to be very common among children — especially in their use of mobile phones, where nearly half had high addictive use. By age 14, children with high or increasing addictive behavior were two to three times as likely as other children to have thoughts of suicide or to harm themselves, the study found.“This is the first study to identify that addictive use is important, and is actually the root cause, instead of time,” said Yunyu Xiao, an assistant professor of psychiatry and population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medical College and the study’s lead author.Addictive behavior may be more difficult to control during childhood, before the prefrontal cortex, which acts as a brake on impulsivity, is fully developed.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

      Trump to Again Extend TikTok’s Reprieve From U.S. Ban

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      The president plans to sign another executive order this week that would give the popular video app more time to change its ownership structure.President Trump intends to again extend the deadline for when TikTok must be separated from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, or face a ban in the United States, its third reprieve this year.Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on Tuesday that Mr. Trump would sign an executive order this week giving TikTok 90 more days — to mid-September — to find a new owner to comply with a federal law that requires the company to change its ownership structure to resolve national security concerns. TikTok’s current deadline is Thursday.“As he has said many times, President Trump does not want TikTok to go dark,” Ms. Leavitt said in a statement.Mr. Trump has repeatedly declined to enforce the law, which the Supreme Court upheld in January after Congress passed it with wide bipartisan support last year. The app’s future is part of the discussion in his administration’s ongoing trade talks with China.Mr. Trump, who issued similar delays in January and in April, has given TikTok an unexpected lifeline after its future in the United States appeared to be doomed. The president tried to ban TikTok in his first term but flipped his stance on the app last year — a shift that is credited in part to one of his donors, who has a sizable stake in ByteDance, as well as his own growing popularity on the app.The repeated extensions have raised concerns among a handful of lawmakers, who have urged Mr. Trump to clarify his plans for TikTok or force it to stop operating in the United States. They and others in Washington worry that TikTok could hand over sensitive U.S. user data to Beijing, like location information, or that China could use TikTok’s content recommendations to sway opinions and spread misinformation in the United States.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 US Politics

      How the right spread ‘brutal and cruel’ misinformation after Minnesota lawmaker killings

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      Tina Smith, a Minnesota senator, confronted Mike Lee, a Utah senator, on Monday to tell him directly that his social media posts fueled ongoing misinformation about a shooting that killed her friend.Lee’s posts, which advanced conspiracies that a Minnesota assassin was a “Marxist” and blamed the state’s governor for Melissa Hortman’s death, were among many threads of false or speculative claims swirling online after the killings.Smith told Lee his posts were “brutal and cruel”, according to CNN. “He should think about the implications of what he’s saying and doing. It just further fuels this hatred and misinformation,” she said. She wanted him to hear from her directly how painful it was to see his words after the brutality her state endured. Lee didn’t say much, according to Smith, and seemed surprised to be confronted.Within hours of the shootings, rightwing social media accounts with millions of followers manufactured false conspiracy theories about the suspect and his motives, falsely portraying the man whose friends say he is an evangelical Christian Trump supporter as a radical leftwing assassin and attempting to paint him as a political ally of Tim Walz, the Democratic governor and former vice-presidential candidate.It was the latest example of a rightwing media ecosystem that swiftly spins up narratives that serve their political agendas after tragic events, regardless of accuracy, and does not correct them after further information shows them to be untrue or incomplete. Elected officials such as Lee and others often share in the spreading rumors, lending legitimacy to these claims.Vance Luther Boelter, 57, was captured on Sunday after he allegedly killed Hortman, a Democratic house speaker, and her husband, and wounded John Hoffman, a state senator, and his wife.Collin Rugg, an engagement farmer on X, advanced a debunkable theory to his followers on X that Hortman was killed over healthcare policy for undocumented immigrants, implying the violence came from the left. He shared a video that ping-ponged around the rightwing internet of Hortman, emotional, describing a vote to repeal healthcare eligibility for undocumented adults.Missing from the post was the context: Hortman supported this care, only voting for its repeal to pass a state budget deal in an evenly split state House. Hoffman, the state senator, had not voted to repeal the provision.Rightwing social media personality Mike Cernovich, with 1.5 million followers, escalated the lie by suggesting Walz ordered the assassination. He hasn’t taken the post down and has continued to advance the claims, posting on Monday that “Democrats know they are now seen as the party of political violence so their propaganda agents are trying to shift the blame. It won’t work.”Laura Loomer, the far-right conspiracy theorist and Trump whisperer, posted that “Walz’s goons are now assassinating lawmakers who support legislation Walz opposes” and called the Democratic party “a terrorist organization”. Loomer and others on the right also tried to tie Boelter to the “No Kings” protests against the Trump administration. Officials found rudimentary signs in the suspect’s vehicle that said “No Kings”, an indication he knew of the event, not that he would attend it as a protester.Elon Musk, a frequent poster of unverified rightwing claims, amplified the narrative to his 200 million followers, quote-tweeting claims that “the left” killed Hortman and saying “the far left is murderously violent”.The lies ignore overwhelming evidence of Boelter’s actual politics: his roommate David Carlson told reporters that Boelter voted for Trump and “was a strong supporter” of the president. Other longtime friends told local media Boelter was right-leaning. While Minnesota voters don’t list party affiliation, he was registered as a Republican in Oklahoma in 2004.Boelter’s own recorded sermons expose his extremist views. Preaching in Congo in 2023, he is recorded as saying: “The churches are so messed up, they don’t know abortion is wrong.” He ranted against LGBTQ+ people as “confused”, claiming “the enemy has gotten so far into their mind and their soul”. His alleged hit list included abortion providers and pro-choice advocates.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionInfluencers seized on Boelter’s appointment to a state board, branding him a “Walz appointee” to misleadingly suggest a personal relationship. In reality, Boelter was first appointed by Walz’s predecessor, who was a Democrat, in 2016 to a 60-member volunteer advisory board. Walz did, however, renew the appointment in 2019, considered a routine administrative decision for one of hundreds of such positions. Walz did not know Boelter.“It was the equivalent of calling a Sunday school volunteer an ‘appointee of the bishop’,” a local reporter wrote.Rightwing X user Viva Frei, with more than 700,000 followers, posted a thread casting doubt on Boelter being a Trump supporter. The account has continued to post about the shootings, attempting to tie Walz to Boelter and his wife, Jennifer. A different Jennifer Boelter interned in Walz’s congressional office, though Frei has not accepted that fact.“Do you believe @GovTimWalz spokesperson when they claim that the Jennifer Boelter who interned for Tim Walz in 2010 is not the same Jennifer Boelter who is married to suspected assassin/domestic terrorist Vance Boelter?” the account asked in a poll.On Monday, posts showing a man at a protest with a shirt with a gun that says “resist” falsely claimed the man was Boelter. “Yea Libs sorry. He’s one of you. Keep saying he’s not. No one believes you,” said one post that got more than 2m views. The actual man in the picture debunked it, saying he was at a “No Kings” rally in Texas in the photo, making clear it was not Boelter.Local Republican officials have largely not contributed to the rumors, in some cases pushing back on the narratives.Harry Niska, the Republican floor leader in the Minnesota House, said on X that he often has and will continue to criticize Walz’s policies and rhetoric. “But there is no responsible basis to attribute to him any of the evil acts committed by Vance Boelter,” he said. More

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      in Elections

      What Is Crashing Out? The Rise of a Useful Slang Term.

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      Adrenaline rising? Patience waning? Gen Z embraces a slang term for familiar feelings.Alejandra Toro was struggling. Everything was going wrong at the same time, she was overwhelmed and she felt as if she was about to have a meltdown. She was crashing out.Ms. Toro, a 30-year-old project manager, documented her “crash out” in a video that has raced to more than 600,000 views, joining the ranks of countless TikTok users who have employed some iteration of the phrase to describe their burst of emotions — and at times, intentional overreactions.“It’s a joking way to explain, like, this could get really bad, really quick,” Ms. Toro said in an interview.There’s no precise definition of the phrase, and both the severity of its meaning and its use cases seem to run the gamut. A fiery confrontation with an ex, an irritated exchange with a parent or a full emotional breakdown can all qualify. But its popularity is undeniable.An entry for the term was recently added to Among the New Words, a dictionary that is part of a quarterly installment of the journal American Speech. It described “crash out” as “a feeling beyond tiredness, a frustration or exhaustion toward something or someone that you throw all care out the window and have a full blown outburst.” (“Crash out” was a runner-up for the publication’s 2024 word of the year — “rawdog” took the title.)Philip Lindsay, a 31-year-old special education teacher and content creator who goes by Mr. Lindsay on social media, said he has heard the phrase used mostly as a signal from students that they’re frustrated.“It’s kind of this forewarning of like, ‘Hey you’re annoying me, I’m going to crash out,’” he said, “or like, ‘This project I’m working on is going to make me crash out.’”

      @_alejthegreat LMAO I start tweaking when my makeup doesn’t cooperate 😂 ♬ original sound – Alej ✨ 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