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    JD Vance’s Big, Beautiful Task

    The vice president is selling Trump’s domestic policy bill amid signs Democratic attacks are breaking through.Vice presidents always have hard jobs.They have little practical authority. They are the face of decisions they are not empowered to make. They get assignments that are hard to ace (like Vice President Kamala Harris’s deployment to address the “root causes” of migration).This morning, I headed to a machine shop in West Pittston, Pa., where Vice President JD Vance was stepping up to shoulder what is becoming a delicate task: selling President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.”Stumping for your boss’s signature legislation might not ordinarily be an arduous assignment. But at least at this early point, the law, for which Vance cast a tiebreaking vote, is simply not very popular. Some Republicans have warned that it will cost their party seats; one is already trying to roll back the bill’s cuts to Medicaid.Making matters worse for Vance, hints of distrust were in the air, given the furor over the administration’s decision not to release more information about the investigation into the convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.The machine shop began filling up with devoted Trump and Vance fans, who arrived in Trump 2028 hats or T-shirts showing the moment the president survived an assassination attempt last summer. But even here, there were questions about the new law, and signs that Democrats’ efforts to highlight it as regressive and call it a giveaway for the wealthy were breaking through.“The Democrats are saying that, I forget the number, but, like, millions of people are going to lose their health care and that kind of thing. And I just want to know if that’s true,” said Jane Mizerak, 68, a Republican from the nearby town of West Wyoming, who said she had voted for Trump each time he had run for president.Republicans Rebound in Support for ImmigrationPercent saying immigration is a good thing for this country today

    Source: Gallup surveys of U.S. adults from 2001 to 2025. By The New York TimesWe 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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    How Trump Decided to Strike Iran

    Standing at the lectern in the White House briefing room on Thursday afternoon, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, read a message she said came “directly from the president.”Because of the “substantial chance of negotiations” with Iran that could bring the United States back from the brink of jumping into the war in the Middle East, President Trump’s statement said, he would make a decision about whether or not to strike Iran “within the next two weeks.”Mr. Trump had been under pressure from the noninterventionist wing of his party to stay out of the conflict, and was having lunch that day with one of the most outspoken opponents of a bombing campaign, Stephen K. Bannon, fueling speculation that he might hold off.It was almost entirely a deception. Mr. Trump had all but made up his mind to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, and the military preparations were well underway for the complex attack. Less than 30 hours after Ms. Leavitt relayed his statement, he would give the order for an assault that put the United States in the middle of the latest conflict to break out in one of the world’s most volatile regions.Mr. Trump’s “two weeks” statement was just one aspect of a broader effort at political and military misdirection that took place over eight chaotic days, from the first Israeli strikes against Iran to the moment when a fleet of B-2 stealth bombers took off from Missouri for the first American military strikes inside Iran since that country’s theocratic revolution in 1979.Journalists watching as President Trump addressed the nation after American bombs were dropped on Iranian nuclear sites on Saturday night.Anna Rose Layden for The New York Times More

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    With Decision to Bomb Iran, Trump Injects U.S. Into Middle East Conflict

    By bombing three nuclear sites in Iran, the United States has joined Israel’s war against the country. Now it is bracing for Iranian retaliation.President Trump announced on Saturday that the U.S. military had bombed three of Iran’s nuclear sites, including its uranium-enrichment facility deep underground at Fordo, injecting the United States directly into a war in the Middle East.The president made the announcement on his social media website, Truth Social, shortly before 8 p.m. in Washington.“We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space,” the president wrote. “A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home. Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this. NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!”The bombing came two days after the White House said Mr. Trump would make a decision “within two weeks” about whether to move ahead with such an attack. Israeli officials were told about the bombing beforehand, and Mr. Trump spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel afterward, according to a person with knowledge of the conversations who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.Mr. Trump said he would address the nation on Saturday night from the White House at 10 p.m.It was not immediately clear how many bombs were dropped, or how much damage was caused to Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium and potentially pursue a nuclear weapon. And Mr. Trump, who had been debating whether to join Israel’s war against Iran, immediately suggested that a diplomatic resolution was still possible. But it was far from clear that Iran would be interested in that.Since making clear that he was considering striking Iran, Mr. Trump has faced pressure from Republican critics and supporters of such of a move, highlighting a split within his own party.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 Meaning of a Trump-Inspired Style

    The Times’s chief fashion critic unravels the Trump-inspired style that has spread quickly across Washington.President Trump has changed a lot about Washington over the past four months, including how it looks.I’m not talking about the city’s architecture, although he has made clear his disdain for the brutalism of many federal buildings (an aesthetic that I’m personally quite fond of).I’m talking about the city’s style.Trump and his inner circle of aides and family members cannonballed into Washington’s ocean of understated suits and blouses with a bold and strikingly consistent approach to clothing, cosmetics and, well, personal enhancements. (Nothing points up its consistency so well as the occasional departure, like the T-shirts and blazers Elon Musk has worn to the Oval Office, including today.) If style is a way to send a message, and politics is largely a matter of communication, the maturation of a “MAGA style” in Trump’s second term is a development worth understanding.So I reached out to our reigning expert: Vanessa Friedman, The Times’s chief fashion critic, who has covered political image-making for years (and who, as it happens, writes an excellent newsletter). We discussed the language of Trumpist fashion, the way it has evolved since Trump’s first term and what it means for men as well as for women.OK, let’s start with some visual aids. Who, to you, really embodies the aesthetic of the people around President Trump?Why don’t we take a look?Clockwise from top left: Maansi Srivastava for The New York Times, Sarah Blesener for The New York Times, Doug Mills/The New York Times, Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesWe 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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    JD Vance’s Campaign Plane Is Being Used for Migrant Deportation Flights

    The Boeing 737 has been chartered more than a dozen times this year by the federal government to deport migrants to several countries in Central America.In its former life, the charter plane with the tail No. N917XA went by the moniker Trump Force Two.The ubiquitous red, white and blue livery logged thousands of miles last year as the campaign plane of JD Vance, who was elected as President Trump’s vice president in November.But that plane — the same one the campaign offered rides on to entice donors to give money — is now carrying out a much different and clandestine kind of task for the Trump administration.The Boeing 737 has been chartered more than a dozen times this year by the federal government to deport migrants to several Central American countries, according to public aviation logs and a group that tracks the flights.The Trump-Vance campaign rode to victory in part on its vow to undertake the largest deportation push in American history. The Trump administration has since expanded the range of people who can be targeted for removal, sped up the deportation process for others and, in some cases, tightened the rules for legal immigrants.In 2018, during President Trump’s first term, the plane was used for at least three deportation flights that took about 360 migrants to El Salvador and Guatemala, according to the Center for Human Rights at the University of Washington. The center obtained the data through a public records request.A fourth flight, chartered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as part of what is known as its ICE Air program, was used to transfer about 144 migrants between detention centers 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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    Reluctant at First, Trump Officials Intervened in South Asia as Nuclear Fears Grew

    After Vice President JD Vance suggested that the conflict between India and Pakistan was not America’s problem, the Trump administration grew concerned that it could spiral out of control.As a conflict between India and Pakistan escalated, Vice President JD Vance told Fox News on Thursday that it was “fundamentally none of our business.” The United States could counsel both sides to back away, he suggested, but this was not America’s fight.Yet within 24 hours, Mr. Vance and Marco Rubio, in his first week in the dual role of national security adviser and secretary of state, found themselves plunged into the details. The reason was the same one that prompted Bill Clinton in 1999 to deal with another major conflict between the two longtime enemies: fear that it might quickly go nuclear.What drove Mr. Vance and Mr. Rubio into action was evidence that the Pakistani and Indian Air Forces had begun to engage in serious dogfights, and that Pakistan had sent 300 to 400 drones into Indian territory to probe its air defenses. But the most significant causes for concern came late Friday, when explosions hit the Nur Khan air base in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, the garrison city adjacent to Islamabad.The base is a key installation, one of the central transport hubs for Pakistan’s military and the home to the air refueling capability that would keep Pakistani fighters aloft. But it is also just a short distance from the headquarters of Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, which oversees and protects the country’s nuclear arsenal, now believed to include about 170 or more warheads. The warheads themselves are presumed to be spread around the country.The intense fighting broke out between India and Pakistan after 26 people, mostly Hindu tourists, were killed in a terrorist attack on April 22 in Kashmir, a border region claimed by both nations. On Saturday morning, President Trump announced that the two countries had agreed to a cease-fire.One former American official long familiar with Pakistan’s nuclear program noted on Saturday that Pakistan’s deepest fear is of its nuclear command authority being decapitated. The missile strike on Nur Khan could have been interpreted, the former official said, as a warning that India could do just that.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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    JD Vance’s Half Brother Advances in Race for Cincinnati Mayor

    Cory Bowman will next face Aftab Pureval, the Democratic incumbent, who outperformed him in Tuesday’s nonpartisan primary.A half brother of Vice President JD Vance who is running for mayor of Cincinnati advanced on Tuesday to compete in the general election.The candidate, Cory Bowman, a Republican coffee shop owner, won a small share of the votes in Tuesday’s nonpartisan primary, according to The Associated Press. He came in second to the current mayor, Aftab Pureval, a Democrat.They will now face each other again in November. The results pushed a third candidate, Brian Frank, also a Republican, out of the race.Cincinnati mayoral elections are technically nonpartisan, but it has been decades since the city elected a Republican to the office. Vice President Kamala Harris won 77 percent of the city’s voters last fall, even as President Trump and Mr. Vance, Ohio’s junior senator, took the state.David Niven, a professor of politics at the University of Cincinnati, said Mr. Bowman’s family connections were unlikely to change that dynamic. “You can’t get that far as a Trump-Vance Republican in the city of Cincinnati.” But anywhere else in the state of Ohio, Dr. Niven said, “He’d be in better shape as a candidate.”Mr. Pureval won both the primary and the general mayoral elections four years ago by wide margins. Until a few months ago, he had seemed poised to run unopposed for a second term. Both Republicans said that possibility spurred them to enter the race, which has focused on local matters like affordable housing, potholes and public safety.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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    Ukrainian Peace Plan Hints at Concessions, but Major Obstacles Remain

    Officials in Kyiv plan to deliver their proposal to President Trump’s team, after rejecting a White House plan that would have given the Kremlin much of what it wants.Ukraine’s leadership has drafted a counterproposal to a Trump administration plan that has drawn criticism for conceding too much to Russia. While the counteroffer digs in on some of Kyiv’s earlier demands, it hints at possible concessions on issues that have long been seen as intractable.Under the plan, which was obtained by The New York Times, there would be no restrictions on the size of the Ukrainian military, “a European security contingent” backed by the United States would be deployed on Ukrainian territory to guarantee security, and frozen Russian assets would be used to repair damage in Ukraine caused during the war.Those three provisions could be nonstarters for the Kremlin, but parts of the Ukrainian plan suggest a search for common ground. There is no mention, for instance, of Ukraine fully regaining all the territory seized by Russia or an insistence on Ukraine joining NATO, two issues that President Volodymyr Zelensky has long said were not up for negotiations.Mr. Trump flew to Rome on Friday to attend the funeral of Pope Francis on Saturday; Mr. Zelensky had planned to as well, but his spokesman said on Friday that this would depend on the situation in Ukraine, where Russian attacks this week on the capital, Kyiv, and elsewhere have left dozens dead and wounded.In a social media post after landing in Rome, Mr. Trump said Russia and Ukraine were “very close to a deal” and urged the two sides to meet directly to “finish it off.” Earlier in the day, he said it was possible he and Mr. Zelensky could meet on the sidelines of the funeral. A senior Ukrainian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that if Mr. Zelensky goes to Rome, he might try to present Mr. Trump with Ukraine’s counterproposal personally.“In the coming days, very significant meetings may take place — meetings that should bring us closer to silence for Ukraine,” Mr. Zelensky said on Friday in remarks that were uncharacteristically optimistic when compared with the tone of previous statements this week.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