For 16 years, advocates for legalizing young immigrants brought here illegally by their parents have tried to pass legislation to shield them from deportation. The bill was called the Dream Act, and in Congresses Democratic and Republican, and in the Bush and Obama administrations, whether by stand-alone bill or comprehensive immigration legislation, it failed again and again.
Now, with 800,000 lives in the balance and a fiercely anti-immigration current running through the Republican Party, lawmakers are being asked to try again — with a six-month deadline, to boot. The prospects for success after more than a decade of false starts would already be daunting, but President Trump may have made the odds even longer after he promised voters last year that Republicans would take a hard line on immigration, then punted the issue to Congress.
His invitation to lawmakers on Tuesday to “do something and do it right” for the so-called dreamers will run into the headwinds of his own politics. On the other hand, lawmakers who for 16 years have been unwilling to grant legal status to a sympathetic group of unauthorized immigrants may find that taking their legal status away is even harder than conferring it.
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Senators Richard J. Durbin, left, and Lindsey Graham during a press conference about the Dream Act at the Capitol on Tuesday.Credit Pete Marovich for The New York Times
Just days after Hurricane Harvey devastated parts of Texas and Louisiana, another storm, Hurricane Irma, has strengthened over the Atlantic Ocean, threatening to batter the Caribbean this week as “an extremely dangerous” Category 5 storm, the National Weather Service said on Tuesday.
Irma is expected to retain Category 4 or 5 status for days as it makes its way through the Caribbean, probably hitting the islands of Barbuda and Antigua first, as soon as Tuesday night. Florida, where some residents and tourists are already being forced to evacuate, is also increasingly likely to feel Irma’s effects later this week and during the weekend, though the storm’s potential impact is not yet clear.
“It is too early to determine what direct impacts Irma might have on the continental United States,” the National Weather Service said on Tuesday. But, it added, “everyone in hurricane-prone areas should ensure that they have their hurricane plan in place.”
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Hurricane Irma grew into a Category 5 storm as it headed west toward the Caribbean Islands. It could make landfall in the northern Leeward Islands as early as Tuesday night.Credit NASA
As for so many other people, election night did not pan out quite the way Robert Stryk expected. Stryk began the night slumped in a Morton’s steakhouse in downtown Washington, tuning out the guests at his watch party to type out the campaign announcement of a buddy who — in the wake of Donald J. Trump’s all-but-certain defeat and the Republican Party implosion that was sure to follow — planned to make a long-shot bid for chairman of the Republican National Committee. He ended it by closing down the bar at the Mayflower Hotel, and after the race was called, giddily marching down Connecticut Avenue with his friends as they chanted, ‘‘Make America Great Again!’’
Stryk, who owned a lobbying firm so small it didn’t actually have an office, spent most of his time in California and owned a small vineyard in Oregon, and he had helped out the Trump campaign as a sort of informal West Coast hand. He was still reveling in Trump’s upset win two nights later, over a bottle of wine on the patio of the Four Seasons in Georgetown, when a chocolate Lab padded over to his table to sniff his crotch. Stryk and the dog’s owner got to talking about wine and cigars and finally, like most of the country, about Trump. It turned out that she worked for New Zealand’s Embassy in Washington. New Zealand’s prime minister still hadn’t connected with the new president-elect, she told Stryk — a diplomatic and political embarrassment. Stryk cocked an eye across the table. ‘‘What if I said I could get you the number of someone to call the president?’’ he asked her.
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Photo illustration by Sam Kaplan for The New York Times. Prop stylist: Gozde Eker.
North Korea carried out its sixth nuclear test on Sunday, according to the South Korean military, an extraordinary show of defiance by North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, against President Trump.
A seismic tremor detected at 12:36 p.m., emanating from the Punggye-ri underground nuclear test in northwestern North Korea, set off a scramble to determine whether the North had carried out another test. The South’s military soon confirmed that it had.
The Defense Ministry estimated that the tremor had a magnitude of 5.7, revising an earlier estimate of 5.6. But the United States Geological Survey’s estimate was much higher, at 6.3.
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North Korea released a photo Sunday of what it said was a hydrogen bomb that could be fitted onto a missile. Hours later, a tremor indicated Pyongyang had conducted its sixth nuclear test.Credit Korean Central News Agency
As water began to recede in some parts of flood-ravaged Houston and as Harvey, now a tropical depression, shifted its wrath to the Beaumont-Port Arthur area of Texas, there were reports early Thursday that a chemical plant at risk of exploding had done just that.
There were two explosions at the Arkema plant in Crosby, about 30 miles northeast of downtown Houston, around 2 a.m., the French chemicals company that owns the plant said in a statement.
It said there was a risk of further explosions at the site.
“We want local residents to be aware that the product is stored in multiple locations on the site, and a threat of additional explosion remains,” Arkema said.
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The scene at a meeting point in the Energy Corridor neighborhood in Houston on Wednesday.Credit Andrew Burton for The New York Times
“Please return to your vehicles,” the ferry attendant announced over the intercom. “We are approaching the terminal.” I dusted off powdered doughnut residue and left the circular snack bar as the boat crossed the Vineyard Sound.
My first vacation on Martha’s Vineyard was bartered. Jessica B. Harris, the culinary historian, English professor and writer, needed eyes for the drive up from New York, and hands, to unload multiple pieces of luggage and white plastic shopping bags filled with pantry items and Swedish red licorice.
In return I would stay in Dr. Harris’s pink-trimmed cottage in Oak Bluffs. Between the pale blue hydrangea bushes of that storied neighborhood and the shoreline of the Inkwell, a historically African-American beach on the island, I met seasoned black Vineyarders whose screen doors swung open in time-honored hospitality.
Many lifelong connections to Martha’s Vineyard began in Dr. Harris’s kitchen. The moments spent communing over brimming picnic baskets, and the salty-sweet smell of serenity, bring people back time and again.
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The culinary historian and writer Jessica Harris, bottom left, hosts a “five to seven” soirée on her porch.Credit Elizabeth Cecil for The New York Times
It was nearing midnight at the Trump International Hotel, and the president’s son was eating macaroni and cheese.
Enveloped in the smooth tones of jazzy hotel music, soft light from a million tiny chandelier crystals and the scent of candied bacon, Eric Trump, fresh from a rally this month in West Virginia, declined a question from a reporter and instead posed one of his own.
“Is everything perfect?” he asked, much like an attentive concierge.
From the Trump family’s point of view, how could it not be?
In this first tumultuous summer of the Trump administration, the hotel has cemented its status as a gathering spot for prominent conservatives and a place for the president’s supporters to see, be seen and curry favor with people in power, one $24 chocolate cigar at a time. (The selfies are free.)
The hotel — a melting pot for Trump family members, Trump surrogates, tourists, YouTube celebrities, journalists and the occasional white nationalist — has earned that status in no small part because it is home to the only Washington restaurant that President Trump visits.
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The entrance to the Trump International Hotel in Washington. The hotel has cemented its status as a gathering spot for prominent conservatives.Credit Alex Wroblewski for The New York Times
At least five deaths and more than a dozen injuries were reported by Sunday morning in the aftermath of Harvey, the hurricane that tore across the Gulf Coast of Texas over the weekend.
• The powerful system, now a tropical storm, pounded the region with torrential rains that were expected to continue for days, causing catastrophic flooding, according to the National Hurricane Center.
• “This event is unprecedented,” the National Weather Service said in a tweet.
• The public hospital for Harris County, which includes Houston, began evacuating patients after flooding disrupted its power supply.
Even after decades of affirmative action, black and Hispanic students are more underrepresented at the nation’s top colleges and universities than they were 35 years ago, according to a New York Times analysis.
The share of black freshmen at elite schools is virtually unchanged since 1980. Black students are just 6 percent of freshmen but 15 percent of college-age Americans, as the chart below shows.
The Arctic is warming about twice as fast as other parts of the planet, and even here in sub-Arctic Alaska the rate of warming is high. Sea ice and wildlife habitat are disappearing; higher sea levels threaten coastal native villages.
But to the scientists from Woods Hole Research Center who have come here to study the effects of climate change, the most urgent is the fate of permafrost, the always-frozen ground that underlies much of the state.
Starting just a few feet below the surface and extending tens or even hundreds of feet down, it contains vast amounts of carbon in organic matter — plants that took carbon dioxide from the atmosphere centuries ago, died and froze before they could decompose. Worldwide, permafrost is thought to contain about twice as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere.
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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Blacks and Hispanics under-represented
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James' World 2 