Federal immigration agents descended on dozens of 7-Eleven convenience stores across the country before daybreak on Wednesday, arresting undocumented workers and demanding paperwork from managers in what the Trump administration described as its largest enforcement operation against employers so far.
The raids of 98 stores in 17 states, from California to Florida, resulted in 21 arrests, according to United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which signaled intensified efforts against companies that hire unauthorized workers.
“Today’s actions send a strong message to U.S. businesses that hire and employ an illegal work force: ICE will enforce the law, and if you are found to be breaking the law, you will be held accountable,” Thomas D. Homan, the acting director of ICE, said in a statement.
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at a 7-Eleven in Los Angeles on Wednesday.CreditChris Carlson/Associated Press
Harvey Weinstein built his complicity machine out of the witting, the unwitting and those in between. He commanded enablers, silencers and spies, warning others who discovered his secrets to say nothing. He courted those who could provide the money or prestige to enhance his reputation as well as his power to intimidate.
In the weeks and months before allegations of his methodical abuse of women were exposed in October, Mr. Weinstein, the Hollywood producer, pulled on all the levers of his carefully constructed apparatus.
He gathered ammunition, sometimes helped by the editor of The National Enquirer, who had dispatched reporters to find information that could undermine accusers. He turned to old allies, asking a partner in Creative Artists Agency, one of Hollywood’s premier talent shops, to broker a meeting with a C.A.A. client, Ronan Farrow, who was reporting on Mr. Weinstein. He tried to dispense favors: While seeking to stop the actress Rose McGowan from writing in a memoir that he had sexually assaulted her, he tried to arrange a $50,000 payment to her former manager and throw new business to a literary agent advising Ms. McGowan. The agent, Lacy Lynch, replied to him in an email: “No one understands smart, intellectual and commercial like HW.”
President Trump on Tuesday appeared to endorse a sweeping immigration deal that would eventually grant millions of undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship, saying he would be willing to “take the heat” politically for an approach that many of his hard-line supporters have long viewed as unacceptable.
The president made the remarks during an extended meeting with congressional Republicans and Democrats who are weighing a shorter-term agreement that would extend legal status for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. Mr. Trump has said such a deal must be accompanied by new money for a border wall and measures to limit immigrants from bringing family members into the country in the future, conditions he repeated during the meeting on Tuesday.
But in backing a broader immigration measure, Mr. Trump was giving a rare public glimpse of an impulse he has expressed privately to advisers and lawmakers — the desire to preside over a more far-reaching solution to the status of the 11 million undocumented immigrants already living and working in the United States. Such action has the potential to alienate the hard-line immigration activists who powered his political rise and helped him win the presidency, many of whom have described it as amnesty for lawbreakers.
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President Trump said legislation around an immigration overhaul should come from love, while also pushing for stronger security measures.Published OnCreditImage by Doug Mills/The New York Times
Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, on Tuesday unilaterally released a highly anticipated transcript of the committee’s interview with one of the founders of the firm that produced a salacious and unsubstantiated dossier outlining a Russian effort to aid the Trump campaign.
The interview, with Glenn R. Simpson of Fusion GPS, took place last summer and was expected to shed light on the origins of the firm’s work, its concerns about the Trump campaign’s activities, and what the F.B.I. may have done with the information.
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Senator Dianne Feinstein of California released the transcripts without the Judiciary Committee’s Republican chairman, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, almost certainly escalating partisan tensions on the committeeCreditPete Marovich for The New York Times
Stephen K. Bannon is stepping down from his post as executive chairman of Breitbart News, the company announced Tuesday.
Mr. Bannon’s departure, which was forced by a onetime financial patron, Rebekah Mercer, comes as Mr. Bannon remained unable to quell the furor over remarks attributed to him in a new book in which he questions President Trump’s mental fitness and disparages his elder son, Donald Trump Jr.
Mr. Bannon and Breitbart will work together on a smooth transition, a statement from the company’s chief executive, Larry Solov, said.
In the statement, Mr. Bannon added that he was “proud of what the Breitbart team has accomplished in so short a period of time in building out a world-class news platform.”
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Stephen Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, is stepping down from his post as executive chairman at Breitbart News, the right-wing website he used as a mouthpiece.Published OnCreditImage by Lexey Swall for The New York Times
Joe Arpaio, the polarizing 85-year-old immigration hard-liner pardoned by President Trump after a conviction for criminal contempt, announced on Tuesday that he is running in Arizona for the United States Senate.
The move by Mr. Arpaio, who just six months ago faced a jail sentence before he was pardoned, upended the race to replace Senator Jeff Flake, a Republican who abandoned his 2018 re-election campaign after coming under criticism from Mr. Trump.
The contenders for the seat include Representative Kyrsten Sinema, a centrist Democrat, and Kelli Ward, a conservative Republican and former state senator who aligns herself with Mr. Trump. Mr. Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, lost his own re-election bid for that post in 2016 to Paul Penzone, a Democrat and Phoenix police officer.
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Joe Arpaio at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Mr. Arpaio announced on Tuesday that he is running for the United States Senate.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times
Norma Storch, a white woman whose decision to have her 4-year-old mixed-race daughter raised by a black couple became the subject of an Emmy Award-winning documentary made by the daughter in adulthood, died on Aug. 28 at her home in Manhattan. She was 81.
The cause was cancer, said the daughter, June Cross, the producer of the documentary, ”Secret Daughter,” which PBS broadcast in 1996.
The film was heralded as a searing look at race relations in the 1950’s and 60’s, and drew praise for its emotional rawness and the bravery of both mother and daughter. Other reviews suggested that the documentary’s power came from a mother’s willingness to reject her daughter and then rationalize it.
Ms. Cross said in an interview last week that this impression properly reflected the documentary but not their real relationship. She said that tensions were exaggerated for dramatic effect.
A generation ago, Republicans sought to protect President Richard Nixon by urging the Senate Watergate committee to look at supposed wrongdoing by Democrats in previous elections. The committee chairman, Sam Ervin, a Democrat, said that would be “as foolish as the man who went bear hunting and stopped to chase rabbits.”
Today, amid a growing criminal inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, congressional Republicans are again chasing rabbits. We know because we’re their favorite quarry.
In the year since the publication of the so-called Steele dossier — the collection of intelligence reports we commissioned about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia — the president has repeatedly attacked us on Twitter. His allies in Congress have dug through our bank records and sought to tarnish our firm to punish us for highlighting his links to Russia. Conservative news outlets and even our former employer, The Wall Street Journal, have spun a succession of mendacious conspiracy theories about our motives and backers.
We are happy to correct the record. In fact, we already have.
After accusations of sexual harassment and physical and verbal abuse, Peter Martins, the powerful leader of New York City Ballet who shaped the company for more than three decades, has decided to retire.
“I have denied, and continue to deny, that I have engaged in any such misconduct,” Mr. Martins, 71, wrote in a letter informing the board of his retirement, which takes effect immediately. Board members were informed of Mr. Martins’s decision in a conference call Monday evening.
Charles W. Scharf, the chairman of the ballet’s board, issued a statement thanking Mr. Martins for his contributions, but noted the investigation is continuing: “The board takes seriously the allegations that have been made against him and we expect the independent investigation of those allegations to be completed soon.”
President Donald Trump on Thursday said he believes he holds ultimate authority to direct the Department of Justice as he sees fit, while noting the ongoing inquiry into Russian intervention in the 2016 presidential election has made the country “look very bad.”
Trump, speaking in an impromptu interview with The New York Times from his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, said more than a dozen times that no collusion had been uncovered during the sweeping probe by special counsel Robert Mueller. While he noted that the sooner the inquiry was completed, “the better it is for the country,” Trump also broke with his most ardent supporters and said he believed Mueller would treat him fairly.
“I have absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department,” he told the Times. “But for purposes of hopefully thinking I’m going to be treated fairly, I’ve stayed uninvolved with this particular matter.”
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
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James' World 2 