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      Trump Offers Elise Stefanik Role as U.N. Ambassador

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      In one of his first cabinet-level personnel decisions, the president-elect has chosen the Republican member of Congress from New York to represent the United States at the United Nations.President-elect Donald J. Trump has offered Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, the role of U.N. ambassador in his upcoming administration.Ms. Stefanik, who represents an upstate New York district in the House and is a member of the Republican leadership in the chamber, has been a vocal supporter of Mr. Trump. His decision to name her to the post was reported earlier by CNN.Ms. Stefanik has accepted the offer, her office said.Ms. Stefanik, 40, emerged as a key ally to Mr. Trump during his first impeachment proceeding. She has been chair of the House Republican conference, but has minimal experience in foreign policy and national security. She has served on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. She has been an outspoken supporter of Israel, and had a high-profile role in the congressional hearings that led to the resignations of several university presidents over their handling of campus unrest following the terror attack by Hamas on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.She also impressed Mr. Trump years ago with an outspoken defense of him during his first impeachment trial in the House. In a statement, Mr. Trump called her a “strong, tough and smart America First fighter.”House Republicans appear on track to win a narrow majority in the incoming Congress. Ms. Stefanik’s departure could make their margin even thinner until an election to replace her is held in what is considered a safe district for the party.It’s not yet clear whether Mr. Trump will be able to raid the House for his loyalists who serve there. Republicans are currently on track to keep their majority, but only by the similar razor-thin margin they have now, which has made it difficult to control the floor. Next year, they will be expected to produce major legislative results as a result of the party’s unified power in Washington.Ms. Stefanik, the first Trump ally from the House who has been announced as a cabinet pick, has long been positioning herself to rise in a Trump administration. But her situation may be particularly difficult. In New York State, Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, would most likely wait as long as possible to call a special election to fill her seat.Elon Musk, the billionaire and major Trump supporter, made clear on X that he had reservations about her appointment, based on the tight margin of control he is expecting in the House.“Elise is awesome, but it might be too dicey to lose her from the House, at least for now,” Mr. Musk wrote on the social media platform.Her selection comes after Mr. Trump last week named Susie Wiles, a longtime political operative who helped lead his campaign, as his White House chief of staff. On Sunday evening, Mr. Trump named Thomas D. Homan, an immigration hard-liner, to be his “border czar.”Annie Karni More

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      Iran and Trump Are Front of Mind at Saudi Summit

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      Leaders from across the Arab and Muslim world were in Riyadh for a meeting officially convened to discuss the fighting in Gaza and Lebanon.Leaders from across the Arab world gathered on Monday in the capital of Saudi Arabia for a summit that came at a delicate moment for the kingdom, which has signaled a rapprochement with Iran after a violent, decades-long rivalry.The meeting was officially convened to discuss the fighting in Gaza and Lebanon, where Israel’s military is battling Iran-backed militant groups. It takes place amid heightened regional tensions and the prospect of a hawkish Trump administration on Iran.Saudi Arabia had been preparing to recognize Israel, but the wars in Gaza and Lebanon cooled that prospect. Now, the kingdom and its allies find themselves warming to Tehran. Last month, the foreign ministers of the Persian Gulf states met for the first time as a group with their Iranian counterpart. On Sunday, the chief of staff of Saudi Arabia’s armed forces met with his Iranian counterpart in Tehran — further signaling a thaw in relations as Iran considers a response to Israeli attacks on its territory.Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, emphasized the relationship in his opening remarks at the summit on Monday.“We call on the international community to compel Israel to respect Iran’s sovereignty and not to attack its territory,” he told the audience in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. Saudi Arabia and Iran have been locked in a long battle for regional dominance, a rivalry shaped by the competing branches of Islam each country embraces. Iran’s network of regional proxies — which includes Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon — has long been a particular source of concern for Saudi Arabia.While Hamas and Hezbollah have been weakened by the Israeli military’s operations in Gaza and Lebanon, Iran still arms and supports the Houthis in Yemen — a group that has been implicated in attacks on the kingdom.“The issue that we’ve had, and that was the basis for the divergence in our relationship, was Iran’s regional behavior, which from our perspective has not contributed to stability,” the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, said last week. “We are having very, very clear and honest conversations with the Iranians.”Analysts said that Saudi Arabia could also be using the summit in Riyadh as an opportunity to send a message to the incoming Trump administration. President-elect Donald J. Trump has said he will “stop wars” when he takes office, noted Hasan Alhasan, a senior fellow for Middle East policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.“Saudi Arabia could be trying to position itself as an attractive and credible choice for the Trump administration to work with if Trump follows through with his pledge to broker a deal to end the war, especially given the fact that diplomatic efforts led by other regional mediators, notably Qatar and Egypt, have failed to bear fruit,” Mr. Alhasan said. More

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      Trump, Jay Powell and a Potential Fight over the Fed’s Future

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      As Trump allies including Elon Musk endorse ending the Federal Reserve’s independence, the central bank’s chair is reportedly ready to go to court to fight back.Jay Powell appears ready to defend Fed independence, and his job.Kent Nishimura/Getty ImagesA battle over the Fed’s future Donald Trump’s threat to exert more say over the Fed or even fire Jay Powell, the chair of the central bank, has alarmed some on Wall Street. But the president-elect’s effort took on added weight in recent days, after Elon Musk endorsed a push to erode the Fed’s independence.The fight shows how the future of the Fed could remain high on the agenda, and how far Musk’s influence — and the role of X as place for announcing policy positions — could extend across government.The Fed has its foes. Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, introduced a bill in June to abolish the central bank, accusing it of being an “economic manipulator that has directly contributed to the financial instability many Americans face today.”Lee said on X that he wants to see the Fed under the president’s control — a view that Musk backed.Powell could turn to the courts to challenge any White House attempt to exert more control, according to The Wall Street Journal’s Nick Timiraos. Trump appointed Powell in 2017 but flirted with removing him shortly afterward. Powell held onto his job, but was ready for a fight if Trump made a move, Timiraos writes:Powell told then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that he would fight his removal if sought by the president, according to people familiar with the matter. Trump was upset the Fed was raising interest rates against his wishes.For Powell, the unsavory prospect of a legal showdown — one he might have to pay for out of his own pocket — was imperative to preserve the ability of future Fed chairs to serve without the threat of being removed over a policy dispute.Powell has made it clear that the president doesn’t have the authority to remove a Fed chair. Last week, he said he wouldn’t step down if Trump asked him to do so after the central bank lowered borrowing costs by a quarter point. Removing him, he added, was “not permitted under the law.”A 1977 law gave Congress more oversight of the Fed, but enshrined the institution’s independence on policy.The central bank’s ability to set monetary policy without political influence is a core tenet for markets and the economy. The Fed also has an outsized influence through its freedom to buy and sell securities, like Treasury notes and bonds, as it looks to bring more liquidity to trading.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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      Senators Vying to Be G.O.P. Leader Vow to Quickly Confirm Trump Nominees

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      Senators Rick Scott, John Thune and John Cornyn quickly responded to President-elect Donald J. Trump’s demand on social media, the latest example of his influence over Republican lawmakers.Senators vying to become the next leader of the Republican conference pledged on Sunday to quickly push through President-elect Donald J. Trump’s appointees after he demanded on social media that they do so.Senator Rick Scott of Florida was the first to make such a vow in an attempt to curry favor with Mr. Trump. Mr. Scott quickly picked up the endorsement of one of the president-elect’s biggest backers, the billionaire Elon Musk.Not to be outdone, Senator John Thune of South Dakota, who is considered a front-runner in the race, released a statement saying that he, too, would push to swiftly staff Mr. Trump’s administration.“One thing is clear: We must act quickly and decisively to get the president’s cabinet and other nominees in place as soon as possible to start delivering on the mandate we’ve been sent to execute, and all options are on the table to make that happen, including recess appointments,” Mr. Thune said.Senator John Cornyn of Texas was not far behind.“It is unacceptable for Senate Ds to blockade President @realDonaldTrump’s cabinet appointments,” he wrote on social media on Sunday. “If they do, we will stay in session, including weekends, until they relent. Additionally, the Constitution expressly confers the power on the President to make recess appointments.”Mr. Cornyn’s staff pointed out that he had already been advocating for quick approval of Mr. Trump’s nominees.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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      There Were Two Huge Problems Harris Could Not Escape

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      Sarah Isgur, a longtime Republican campaign operative — and my friend and a senior editor at The Dispatch — has a brilliant sports analogy for the process of campaigning. She compares it to … curling.For those unfamiliar with the sport (which enjoys 15 minutes of fame every Winter Olympics), it involves sliding a very large, heavy “rock” toward a target on the ice. One person “throws” a 44-pound disc-shaped stone by sliding it along the ice, sweepers come in and frantically try to marginally change the speed and direction of the rock by brushing the ice with “brooms” that can melt just enough of the ice to make the rock travel farther or perhaps a little bit straighter.The sweepers are important, no doubt, but they cannot control the rock enough to save a bad throw. It’s a matter of physics. The rock simply has too much momentum.What does this have to do with politics? As Isgur writes, “The underlying dynamics of an election cycle (the economy, the popularity of the president, national events driving the news cycle) are like the 44-pound ‘stone.’ ” The candidates and the campaign team are the sweepers. They work frantically — and they can influence the stone — but they don’t control it.One of the frustrating elements of political commentary is that we spend far too much time talking about the sweeping and far too little time talking about the stone. Political hobbyists in particular (and that includes journalists!) are very interested in ad campaigns, ground games and messaging.Those things do matter, but when facing an election defeat this comprehensive, you know it was the stone that made the difference.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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      The Democratic Blind Spot That Wrecked 2024

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      The 2022 election went better than Democrats could have hoped. The party picked up governor’s mansions and state legislatures and expanded their Senate majority. It held down losses in the House. The promised “red wave” never crashed ashore. Perhaps it would have been better if it had.Looking back, the seeds of Democrats’ 2024 wipeout were planted in the quasi-victory of 2022. Three things happened in the aftermath. The pressure on President Biden not to run for re-election, and the possibility of a serious primary challenge if he did run, evaporated. Democrats persuaded themselves of a theory of the electorate that proved mistaken. And as a result, the Biden-Harris administration avoided the kind of hard, post-defeat pivot that both the Clinton and Obama administrations were forced to make after the midterm defeats of 1994 and 2010.In 2020, Democrats had worried over Biden’s age, but were comforted, in part, by the soft signals he sent that he would serve only one term. “Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” he said in 2020. By mid-2022, as Biden signaled his intention to run again, the party was growing alarmed. In June of that year, The Times interviewed nearly 50 Democratic officials and found that among “nearly all the Democrats interviewed, the president’s age — 79 now, 82 by the time the winner of the 2024 election is inaugurated — is a deep concern about his political viability.”Nor was the public thrilled about the results the Biden administration was delivering. In October of 2022, amid widespread anger over inflation, the Times-Siena poll found Biden with a 38 percent job approval rating and trailing Trump in a hypothetical rematch.If Democrats had been wiped out in the midterms, the pressure on Biden to be the transitional figure he’d promised to be would have been immense. If he’d run again despite that pressure, he might have faced serious challengers. But Democrats fared far better than they had expected. The president’s saggy approval rating and the widespread anger at inflation were nowhere to be found in the election results. In their first referendum under Biden, Democrats did much better than they had under Clinton or Obama. Any pressure on Biden to step aside — and any possibility of a real primary challenge — ended.In its place, a new theory of the electorate emerged, based on the way Democrats over-performed in contested states, like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and underperformed in safe states, like New York and California. There were two coalitions: the MAGA coalition and the anti-MAGA coalition. The anti-MAGA coalition was bigger, but it needed to be activated by the threat of Donald Trump or the Dobbs abortion ruling. A slew of special election victories in 2023 seemed to confirm the theory. Democrats were winning elections they had no business winning, given Biden’s low approval rating and public anger over inflation. But the anti-MAGA coalition’s hatred of Trump had changed the electoral math.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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      50,000 Russian and North Korean Troops Mass Ahead of Attack, U.S. Says

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      Ukrainian officials expect a counteroffensive in western Russia to begin in the coming days as North Korea’s troops train with Russian forces.The Russian military has assembled a force of 50,000 soldiers, including North Korean troops, as it prepares to begin an assault aimed at reclaiming territory seized by Ukraine in the Kursk region of Russia, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials.A new U.S. assessment concludes that Russia has massed the force without having to pull soldiers out of Ukraine’s east — its main battlefield priority — allowing Moscow to press on multiple fronts simultaneously.Russian troops have been clawing back some of the territory that Ukraine captured in Kursk this year. They have been attacking Ukrainian positions with missile strikes and artillery fire, but they have not yet begun a major assault there, U.S. officials said.Ukrainian officials say they expect such an attack involving the North Korean troops in the coming days.For now, the North Koreans are training with Russian forces in the far western part of Kursk.The Russian-North Korean offensive looms as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to re-enter office with a stated goal of ending the war quickly. Mr. Trump has said little about how he would settle the conflict, but Vice President-elect JD Vance has outlined a plan that would allow Russia to keep the territory it has seized in Ukraine.Some U.S. military and intelligence officials have grown more pessimistic about Ukraine’s overall prospects, noting that Russia has steadily gained ground, both in Kursk and in eastern Ukraine. Officials say the setbacks are partly a result of Ukraine’s failure to solve critical shortfalls in troop strength.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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      Netflix’s Martha Stewart Documentary Says She Was the Original Influencer. Was She?

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      The new Netflix documentary “Martha” examines the homemaking diva’s illustrious, and complicated, career and personal life.“Martha,” a new documentary now on Netflix, offers a candid portrait of the rise and fall (and rebirth?) of the homemaker extraordinaire, who last year, at 81, appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated.The film, by R.J. Cutler, touches on Ms. Stewart’s troubled childhood, troubled marriage, time on Wall Street and where everything really began: the idyllic Connecticut countryside where she renovated a farmhouse. It looks at how a high-end catering business made her a media mogul with her own magazine, television show and brand of Kmart sheets. And it digs into her highly publicized trial, conviction and prison time.In an edited conversation, members of the Styles staff — Vanessa Friedman, Madison Malone Kircher and Jacob Gallagher — and James B. Stewart, a business reporter and columnist whose book “Tangled Webs” examined the insider trading probe that incriminated Ms. Stewart, discussed the documentary and the life of a woman who built a man’s empire on being the ultimate homemaker.MADISON MALONE KIRCHER: I realized how little I actually knew about a woman who was basically a canonized saint in my house growing up. Which is to say I was hooked!JAMES STEWART: I liked the film a lot. Her body language and expressions were so revealing. She looked very uncomfortable most of the time. But it was very kind to her.VANESSA FRIEDMAN: I found watching the film especially interesting in the context of the election, and the complicated feelings around women — particularly, powerful, successful women. Because it did reveal very complicated feelings about Martha.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