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      The Best Books About Politics (According to You)

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      Here’s what we’re turning to for clarity and perspective on our current political moment.The last few months have felt like a political thriller, an epic co-written by Shakespeare and Clancy with a wash of the cacophonous political jostling captured so deftly by Richard Ben Cramer.And since it is now the last day (observed) of our stranger-than-fiction summer, I want to linger for just a moment on the books you turn to to make sense of it all.Earlier this week, I asked you to tell me about your favorite books about politics. I urged you to think broadly about fiction and nonfiction — no need for lab-grown political memoir here — and nearly 1,000 of you obliged before we closed our submissions. I read every single one. You came up with new reasons to read classics and drew out the politics in romance and fantasy books.And, yes, some of you even submitted your own work for consideration.The selection that follows is not supposed to be exhaustive. It does not include my recent favorite (Muriel Spark’s “The Abbess of Crewe,” which is basically Watergate but with nuns), because no one suggested it. But it is a list of books you’re turning to for clarity and perspective on how we got to our current political moment, and what it means. Without further ado, I bring you the On Politics unofficial literary canon, as recommended by you. Let me know if you read one, and if you want to join the Robert Penn Warren book club that I will totally start after the election.“All the King’s Men,” Robert Penn Warren (1946): OK. You guys love this book, which is a fictional tale of a populist governor in the Deep South inspired by Huey Long. You love it more than “All the President’s Men.” You might even love it more than “What It Takes” and the works of Hunter S. Thompson. I’ll leave it to one reader, John Armstrong of Raleigh, N.C., to explain why:It captures the entire dynamic of politics in America. The messianic leader who comes to see himself as the embodiment of the people and then its higher self. Those who seek his favor, always jockeying for position, always ready to turn against him when they see a new vehicle for their ambition. The masses who follow anything that moves, and, among them, those few idealists. All that, and beautifully written.“The Last Hurrah,” Edwin O’Connor (1956): This book about the political machine, as told through a fictional mayor of a city that seems a little like Boston, is “a reminder that everything old is new again,” wrote Tim Shea. And it taught Sean Sweeney, a SoHo political activist, how upstarts can beat incumbents. “We had to teach ourselves to do the campaigning that the book details,” he wrote me.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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      Trump to Speak at Moms for Liberty Convention

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      Last year, the former president told the group it was time to “liberate our children from the Marxist lunatics and perverts” in education. Does that message still resonate with voters?Former President Donald J. Trump is set to speak Friday evening to a gathering of Moms for Liberty, a conservative activist group whose priorities mirror much of his own education platform.Like Mr. Trump, they have called for stricter classroom discipline and vouchers for private school tuition and home-schooling costs. They want to ban certain books and cut funding to schools that embrace progressive ideas on gender and race, while slimming down or even closing the federal Department of Education.But as his presidential campaign leans heavily on cultural divides over gender, parenting and education, there have been signs of voter weariness, and questions over whether social issues in schools are still energizing voters.“Is this a wave that’s on the decline?” asked Julie Marsh, a professor at the University of Southern California who has studied school board elections. “We’re perhaps seeing signs of parents being turned off by some of this.”Mr. Trump’s appearance in Washington, D.C., is his second time speaking at the annual convention of Moms for Liberty, which was founded in 2021. He has embraced the group’s rhetoric, telling convention attendees last year that he would “liberate our children from the Marxist lunatics and perverts who have infested our educational system.”In the past several months, Mr. Trump has floated provocative ideas like allowing parents to elect principals and creating an alternative credentialing body for teachers who embrace “patriotic values.”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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      Trump Tries to Move Hush-Money Case to Federal Court Before Sentencing

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      The long-shot request, which the former president made Thursday night, is an attempt to avoid sentencing in his criminal case, scheduled for Sept. 18.Former President Donald J. Trump sought to move his Manhattan criminal case into federal court on Thursday, filing the unusual request three months after he was convicted in state court.The long-shot bid marks Mr. Trump’s latest effort to stave off his sentencing in state court in his hush-money trial, in which he was convicted of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal.He is scheduled to receive his punishment on Sept. 18, just seven weeks before Election Day, when he will square off against Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidency.“The ongoing proceedings will continue to cause direct and irreparable harm to President Trump — the leading candidate in the 2024 presidential election — and voters located far beyond Manhattan,” Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, wrote in the filing.Their filing came even as the Trump legal team is awaiting the result of a separate effort to postpone the sentencing; it opened a second front that could complicate the first.On Aug. 15, Mr. Trump asked the state court judge who presided over the trial, Juan M. Merchan, to delay the sentencing until after Election Day. Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued that they needed more time to challenge his conviction on the basis of a recent Supreme Court ruling granting presidents broad immunity for official acts.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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      Trump Floats I.V.F. Coverage Mandate While Campaigning in Michigan

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      The week after Democrats spent much of their national convention attacking him over his position on abortion rights and reproductive health, former President Donald J. Trump said on Thursday that he would require insurance companies or the federal government to pay for all costs associated with in vitro fertilization treatments if he is elected in November.Mr. Trump’s announcement — made in an NBC interview, a speech in Michigan and a town hall in Wisconsin — came with little detail about his proposal or how he might address its cost. For one cycle, the treatments can cost up to $20,000 or more. But he has been trying to rebrand himself to voters on reproductive access and abortion rights, issues that have cost Republicans at the ballot box.Mr. Trump, who often on the campaign trail has bragged about his role in appointing Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, last week on social media declared that his administration “will be great for women and their reproductive rights,” a phrase used by abortion-rights advocates.The post appeared to be an effort by Mr. Trump to cast himself as more of a political moderate on abortion, an issue that could hurt him in November.On Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign accused Mr. Trump of trying to run from his record on abortion access.“Trump lies as much if not more than he breathes, but voters aren’t stupid,” Sarafina Chitika, a spokeswoman for the Harris campaign, said in a statement. “Because Trump overturned Roe v. Wade, I.V.F. is already under attack and women’s freedoms have been ripped away in states across the country.”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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      Harris Defends Ideological Shift to Center in CNN Interview

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      In her first television interview as the Democratic nominee for president, Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday defended her ideological shift to the political center, saying she would appoint a Republican to her cabinet but promising “my values have not changed.”She also curtly rejected former President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claim that she recently “became” Black, according to partial excerpts released by CNN. The full interview will air at 9 p.m. Eastern time on CNN.Ms. Harris, taking questions Thursday afternoon from the CNN anchor Dana Bash in Savannah, Ga., sought to stake out political ground that would appeal to swing voters even as she assured progressive supporters she was still with them.“The most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is: My values have not changed,” Ms. Harris said, adding that her past support for the so-called Green New Deal was reflected in the passage of a sweeping climate bill that Mr. Biden signed in 2022.Ms. Harris told Ms. Bash that it was “important to find a common place of understanding of where we can actually solve problems,” according to CNN.Appointing a nominally bipartisan cabinet would be a return to tradition after eight years of more partisan White Houses. No Republicans are serving in President Biden’s cabinet. But President Barack Obama had a Republican secretary of transportation and two Republican secretaries of defense. President George W. Bush had a Democratic transportation secretary, and before that, President Bill Clinton had a Republican defense secretary.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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      Harris, Before CNN Interview Runs, Presses Attack Against Trump in Georgia

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      Vice President Kamala Harris, who has spent the last few weeks trying to define herself and her life story for voters, turned on Thursday to describing the version of former President Donald J. Trump that she wants Americans to see, saying his candidacy represented a “full-on assault on hard-fought, hard-won freedoms and rights.”At a campaign rally in Savannah, Ga., Ms. Harris accused him of wanting to curtail abortion access, cut Social Security and Medicare, and give tax breaks to big corporations and billionaires. She said his plan for across-the-board tariffs on imported goods amounted to an unfair tax on working families.“Unlike Donald Trump, I will always put the middle-class and working-class families first,” Ms. Harris said to a crowd of thousands at a basketball arena. She added, “We’ve got some work to do, because we know Donald Trump has a very different plan.”Her audience broke into chants of “We’re not going back,” which has quickly become a favorite slogan at her rallies.Ms. Harris made her appearance hours before her first major interview since becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee was set to be broadcast on CNN. She had faced rising pressure to hold an interview with a top journalist, with Republicans accusing her of hiding from tough questions.In early clips of the interview released by CNN on Thursday afternoon, Ms. Harris pledged to appoint a Republican to her cabinet and curtly rejected Mr. Trump’s recent questioning of her racial identity.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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      Naked Emperors and Crypto Campaign Cash

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      Once upon a time there was an emperor who loved being fashion-forward. So he was receptive to some fast-talking tailors who promised to make him a suit out of new, high-technology fabric — a suit so comfortable that it would feel as if he were wearing nothing at all. “Fortune favors the brave,” they told him.Of course, the reason the suit was so comfortable was that it didn’t exist; the emperor was walking around naked. But the members of Congress who made up his retinue didn’t dare tell him. For they knew that the tailors deceiving the emperor controlled lavishly funded super PACs that would spend large sums to destroy the career of anyone revealing their scam.OK, I changed the story a bit. But it’s one way to understand the remarkably large role the crypto industry is playing in campaign finance this year.Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency, was introduced 15 years ago and was promoted as a replacement for old-fashioned money. But it has yet to find significant uses that don’t involve some sort of criminal activity. The crypto industry itself has been racked by theft and scams.But while crypto has thus far been largely unable to find legitimate applications for its products, it has been spectacularly successful at marketing its offerings. Cryptocurrencies, which are traded for other crypto assets but otherwise mainly seem suited for things like money laundering and extortion, are currently worth around $2 trillion.And in this election cycle the crypto industry has become a huge player in campaign finance. I mean huge: Crypto, which isn’t a big industry in terms of employment or output (even if you posit, for the sake of argument, that what it produces is actually worth something), accounts for almost half of corporate spending on political action committees this cycle.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