Social Responsibility

Hamas leaders said on Friday that they had decided to free the mother and daughter for “humanitarian reasons.” On Saturday, in an unmarked villa in Doha, Khalil al-Hayya, a member of the Hamas Politburo, shared more of the group’s thinking.He argued that the members of the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, who carried out the Oct. 7 attack, had been instructed not to harm or capture civilians. But after the fighters broke through Israel’s metal barrier fence with Gaza, he said, members of other armed groups and other Gazans poured in behind them.It was these people, Mr. al-Hayya insisted, who…

The president of a synagogue in Detroit who was known as one of the city’s most vibrant religious leaders was found killed near her home on Saturday. The authorities have not yet determined a motive.The president, Samantha Woll, 40, led the board of the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue, a century-old institution that is the only free-standing synagogue in downtown Detroit, according to its website.The Detroit Police released a statement on Saturday saying that a woman had been found unresponsive in the morning on a street east of downtown and that she had been declared dead at the scene. The statement…

Kenneth Chesebro on Friday became the second lawyer in two days to plead guilty in a criminal racketeering indictment that also named Donald J. Trump.Mr. Chesebro also agreed to cooperate with state prosecutors in Fulton County, Ga., who have accused him, Mr. Trump and 17 others of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. On Thursday, Sidney K. Powell made a similar deal and said she, too, would cooperate with the prosecutors.Mr. Chesebro was accused of conspiring to create slates of fake electors to support Mr. Trump in Georgia and several other states won by President Biden. His lawyers had argued…

Mr. Trump’s adversaries often look to the courts for relief, but there’s no remedy there for his tirades. The First Amendment protects all but the most explicit incitements to violence, so Mr. Trump has little reason to fear that prosecutors will bring charges against him for those remarks.The most notorious moment of Mr. Trump’s presidency also demonstrated the limits of relying on the courts as a meaningful check on his provocations. In his speech on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021, he urged his supporters to “fight like hell,” and many did just that at the Capitol. But they paid…

The judge presiding over the civil fraud trial of Donald J. Trump fined the former president $5,000 on Friday for a “blatant violation” of a gag order imposed this month.The judge, Arthur F. Engoron, stopped short of holding Mr. Trump in contempt but warned that the former president still could face harsher punishments, even jail time, if he ran afoul of the order again.In the trial’s opening days, Justice Engoron had barred Mr. Trump from attacking his court staff after the former president posted a picture on social media of Justice Engoron’s law clerk, Allison Greenfield, with Senator Chuck Schumer,…

I know you have a lot on your mind, people. But if you’ve got a few minutes to spare, let’s talk about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Come on. It’s either him or Jim Jordan.Perhaps you’ve heard that Kennedy is now running for president as a third-party candidate. Meaning that he’s hoping to appeal to voters who aren’t satisfied with the two probable major party nominees.These dissatisfied voters would include, I guess, just about everybody. That’s the problem with third-party candidates: Nobody really expects them to win, so voters feel they can express their dissatisfaction without taking any real responsibility.But in our…

A State Department official in the bureau that oversees arms transfers resigned this week in protest of the Biden administration’s decision to continue sending weapons and ammunition to Israel as it lays siege to Gaza in its war with Hamas.In his resignation letter, Josh Paul, who has been the director of congressional and public affairs for the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs for over 11 years, said the Biden administration’s “blind support for one side” was leading to policy decisions that were “shortsighted, destructive, unjust and contradictory to the very values we publicly espouse.”“The response Israel is taking, and…

House Republicans spent Thursday fighting among themselves in closed-door meetings, trading blame and insults and casting about for a way forward as they failed again to coalesce around a speaker candidate.It was a day of uncertainty and whiplash on Capitol Hill, and the House remained paralyzed as war raged overseas and a government shutdown grew near. House members were unable to act on even the most basic of legislation while President Biden prepared to request a $100 billion emergency national security spending package that included aid for Israel and Ukraine and would need congressional approval.By Thursday evening, Representative Jim Jordan…