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      Trump Squeezes His Party on Domestic Policy Bill

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      The president visited the weekly meeting of House Republicans to make the case for the legislation and pressure members of his party to fall into line.President Trump on Tuesday huddled with House Republicans on Capitol Hill to urge them to unify around a wide-ranging bill to deliver his domestic agenda, ratcheting up the pressure for the party to overcome divisions that could sink the package.Joining Republicans at their weekly closed-door meeting, Mr. Trump praised Speaker Mike Johnson, who has been toiling to cobble together the votes to pass what the party has dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which they hope to bring to a vote by the end of the week.“I’m his biggest fan — I love this guy,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Johnson before the meeting. The speaker can afford to lose no more than three votes on the bill if all Democrats oppose it, as expected, and every lawmaker is present and voting.The president made it clear that he saw passage of the measure as a test of loyalty to him, saying he had been a “cheerleader” for the party, and warning that any holdouts “wouldn’t be a Republican much longer.”But he minimized the very real rifts within his party that could derail the measure, saying there were “one or two grandstanders” holding it up.That is not the case. Several Republican factions have expressed concern about the details of the sprawling bill, which would extend the 2017 tax cuts and eliminate taxes on tips and overtime pay; raise spending on the military and immigration enforcement; and cut Medicaid, food stamps, education and subsidies for clean energy to pay for some of 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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      Senate Advances Crypto Regulation Bill With Bipartisan Support

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      Democrats who had sided with the rest of their party last week to block the measure over concerns that President Trump could benefit dropped their objections. They argued that regulating the industry was urgent.The Senate on Monday revived a first-of-its-kind bill to regulate parts of the cryptocurrency industry, after a small number of Democrats who had joined the rest of their party in blocking the measure joined Republicans in allowing it to advance.The vote was 66 to 32 to move forward with the legislation, which would create a regulatory framework for stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency tied to the value of an existing asset, often the U.S. dollar. Sixteen Democrats joined the majority of Republicans in support, acting over the opposition of most others in their party, who were concerned that President Trump and his family were inappropriately profiting from crypto.The vote was a victory for the cryptocurrency industry, which has made significant advances in Washington with the backing of Mr. Trump and a bipartisan group of lawmakers. It suggested that the measure would have enough support to pass the Senate and potentially make it to Mr. Trump’s desk in short order. A parallel effort in the House has faced similar backlash from Democrats, who earlier this month blocked a hearing on the legislation but are unlikely to have the votes to prevent it from passing.In the Senate, a bloc of Democratic supporters had pressed in recent days to include stronger consumer protections and transparency requirements in the legislation, as well as provisions aimed at combating money laundering and terrorism financing.But the most animating worry for Democrats was that the legislation could enable the president and his family to profit by issuing their own stablecoins. Concerns over the Trump family’s involvement in the industry intensified after reporting by The New York Times showed how a firm associated with the president had recently become one of the most influential players in the industry.In a prolonged round of bipartisan negotiations over the bill, Republicans steadfastly refused to consider adding any provision to rein in Mr. Trump’s involvement in the industry, or make any modification that could interfere with his or his family’s ability to benefit.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 Targets Harris Campaign’s Links to Oprah Winfrey, Beyoncé and Bruce Springsteen

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      The president claimed without evidence on Monday that Kamala Harris had violated campaign-finance law, essentially by paying superstars for endorsements “under the guise of paying for entertainment.”President Trump is calling for a “major investigation” into the celebrities Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey and Bono, bringing his retribution campaign to the music industry.Mr. Trump, in a pair of posts on Truth Social on Monday, argued that Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party nominee was violating campaign-finance law, essentially by paying those figures for endorsements “under the guise of paying for entertainment.”There is no evidence that Ms. Harris paid for the endorsements, although details on celebrity engagements can be somewhat murky. Under campaign finance law, campaigns are required to pay the fair-market value for the costs of events so as to make sure that a company or individual is not donating in excess of federal contribution limits.Ms. Harris paid $1 million to Ms. Winfrey’s production company for a live-streamed town hall in Detroit, according to campaign-finance records. Ms. Winfrey has said the money paid for costs and salaries related to the event and was not a personal fee.Beyoncé headlined a rally for Ms. Harris in her hometown of Houston for an abortion-rights event, and Ms. Harris’s campaign paid the singer’s company $165,000 in November for “campaign event production,” according to campaign-finance records. Mr. Trump falsely claimed on Monday that her payment was $11 million, citing unspecified “news reports.” The artist’s mother has called that figure a “lie.”Mr. Trump’s angry posts come as his ire has been raised against Mr. Springsteen, who sharply criticized Mr. Trump during a concert in Manchester, England, last week. Mr. Trump responded with a social media post calling him a “dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker.” Mr. Springsteen performed at a rally in Atlanta in the final weeks of the presidential race, though no records available yet show any payment from Ms. Harris’s campaign.It was not clear why Mr. Trump named Bono, the Irish singer-songwriter who fronts the band U2. While he is a friend of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and received from him a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian award, he did not appear at any campaign events with Ms. Harris, nor did he endorse her. More

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      How Trump’s Search for a New Air Force One Led to Qatar’s Jet

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      President Trump wanted a quick solution to his Air Force One problem.The United States signed a $3.9 billion contract with Boeing in 2018 for two jets to be used as Air Force One, but a series of delays had slowed the work far past the 2024 delivery deadline, possibly beyond Mr. Trump’s second term.Now Mr. Trump had to fly around in the same old planes that transported President George H.W. Bush 35 years ago. It wasn’t just a vanity project. Those planes, which are no longer in production, require extensive servicing and frequent repairs, and officials from both parties, reaching back a decade or more, had been pressing for replacements.Mr. Trump, though, wanted a new plane while he was still in office. But how?“We’re the United States of America,” Mr. Trump said this month. “I believe that we should have the most impressive plane.”The story of how the Trump administration decided that it would accept a free luxury Boeing 747-8 from Qatar to serve as Air Force One involved weeks of secret coordination between Washington and Doha. The Pentagon and the White House’s military office swung into action, and Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steven Witkoff, played a key role.Soon after Mr. Trump took office, military officials started to discuss how the United States could buy a temporary plane for Mr. Trump to use while Boeing’s work creaked along, an investigation by The New York Times found. But by May 11, when the president announced on social media that Qatar would be providing the plane to the United States, he characterized it as “a GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE.”There are lingering questions about how much financial sense the still-unsigned deal would make, given the costs of refitting the plane for presidential use and operating it over the long run — or even whether the plane could be ready for Mr. Trump to use before the end of his second term.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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      Justice Dept. to Use False Claims Act to Pursue Institutions Over DEI Efforts

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      The department’s use of the law is all but certain to be met with legal challenges.The Trump administration plans to leverage a law intended to punish corrupt recipients of federal funding to pressure institutions like Harvard to abandon their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, Justice Department officials announced late Monday.President Trump’s political appointees at the department cited antisemitism on campuses as justification for using the law, the False Claims Act, to target universities and other institutions that Mr. Trump views as bastions of opposition to his agenda and a ripe populist target to rile up his right-wing base.“Institutions that take federal money only to allow antisemitism and promote divisive D.E.I. policies are putting their access to federal funds at risk,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “This Department of Justice will not tolerate these violations of civil rights — inaction is not an option.”The department’s use of the law is all but certain to be met with legal challenges. Last week, the Justice Department notified Harvard, which receives billions in government grants, of an investigation into whether its admissions process had been used to defraud the government by failing to comply with a Supreme Court ruling that effectively ended affirmative action.The department will seek fines and damages in most instances where violations are found. But it will consider criminal prosecutions in extreme circumstances, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche warned in a memo to staff.The initiative will be a joint project of the department’s anti-fraud unit and its Civil Rights Division, which has been sharply downsized and redirected from its historical mission of addressing race-based discrimination to pursue Mr. Trump’s culture war agenda.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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      Emil Bove, Top Justice Dept. Official, Is Considered for Circuit Court Nomination

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      Emil Bove III has emerged as a top contender to fill a vacancy on the appeals court covering Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, people familiar with the matter said.President Trump is considering nominating Emil Bove III, a top Justice Department official responsible for enacting his immigration agenda and ordering the purge of career prosecutors, to be a federal appeals judge, according to people familiar with the matter.Mr. Bove, 44, is a former criminal defense lawyer for Mr. Trump and a longtime federal prosecutor in New York. He was the Justice Department official at the center of the Trump administration’s request earlier this year to dismiss a corruption case against the mayor of New York, Eric Adams.One of the department’s most formidable and feared political appointees in the second Trump administration, he has emerged as a top contender to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, those people said.There are two vacancies on the court — one based in New Jersey and one in Delaware. It is not clear which seat Mr. Bove is under consideration for. He has a property in Pennsylvania, and some conservatives have called for moving the Delaware-based seat to Pennsylvania.The people familiar with the matter spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive internal matter that has not yet been publicly announced. They cautioned that the timing remains unclear, and the intentions could still shift.If Mr. Bove is nominated for the post, Democrats are all but certain to use his Senate confirmation process to scrutinize his role in some of the Justice Department’s most contentious actions since Mr. Trump took 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 a Prostate Cancer Diagnosis Like Biden’s Means for Patients

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      While prognoses for prostate cancer patients were once measured in months, experts say that advances in treatment and diagnosis now improve survival by years.Prostate cancer experts say that former President Joseph R. Biden’s diagnosis is serious. Announced on Sunday by his office, the cancer has spread to his bones. And it is Stage 4, the most deadly of stages for the illness. It cannot be cured.But the good news, prostate cancer specialists said, is that recent advances in diagnosing and treating prostate cancer — based in large part on research sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and the Defense Department — have changed what was once an exceedingly grim picture for men with advanced disease.“Life is measured in years now, not months,” said Dr. Daniel W. Lin, a prostate cancer specialist at the University of Washington.Dr. Judd Moul, a prostate cancer expert at Duke University, said that men whose prostate cancer has spread to their bones, “can live 5, 7, 10 or more years” with current treatments. A man like Mr. Biden, in his 80s, “could hopefully pass away from natural causes and not from prostate cancer,” he said.Mr. Biden’s office said the former president had urinary symptoms, which led him to seek medical attention.But, Dr. Lin said, “I highly doubt his symptoms were due to cancer.”Instead, he said, the most likely scenario is that a doctor did an exam, noticed a nodule on Mr. Biden’s prostate and did a blood test, the prostate-specific antigen test. The PSA test looks for a protein released by cancer cells, and can be followed up by an M.R.I. The blood test and the M.R.I. would have pointed to the cancer.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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      Free Press, Free People

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      An interview with the publisher of The Times.Every day, this newsletter brings you the best of New York Times journalism — scoops, investigations, reports from inside war zones or natural disasters, interviews with powerful people and quirky characters, stories that help explain our messy, complicated, frustrating and occasionally delightful world. Sometimes we take for granted what makes that possible.The freedom to ask tough questions. To go where news is happening. To tell the truth even when it makes people mad.Last week, our publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, gave an important speech at the University of Notre Dame about how these freedoms of the press underpin our freedoms as people — how journalism helps hold up democracy. You can — and should! — read the whole thing here, but I also asked the big boss a few questions about it. We usually think of threats to journalists and state control of the media as the scourge of authoritarian societies. How can this be happening here, home of the vaunted First Amendment?There are two very different types of journalistic repression. The more dangerous and dramatic occurs in places like China and Russia, where journalists have their work overtly censored, or are even jailed or killed over it.But there is a subtler, more insidious, playbook for going after journalists in democracies. Selectively using investigatory or regulatory powers to punish journalists and news organizations, for example. Filing frivolous lawsuits against them. Targeting their owners’ unrelated business interests.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