Social Responsibility

The 2020 presidential campaign was underway, and Anthony Pratt was doubling down on Donald J. Trump.Mr. Pratt, the chairman of a multinational paper and packaging company and one of Australia’s richest men, had already paid to join Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. He had also spent top dollar to ring in the new year there while rubbing elbows with the president. And, eager to behold a Trump re-election celebration at the club, he had offered to reach into his pocket once again as Election Day approached.“If Potus is having his election party at mar Lago I’ll book as many…

Home buyers, entrepreneurs and public officials are confronting a new reality: If they want to hold off on big purchases or investments until borrowing is less expensive, it’s probably going to be a long wait.Governments are paying more to borrow money for new schools and parks. Developers are struggling to find loans to buy lots and build homes. Companies, forced to refinance debts at sharply higher interest rates, are more likely to lay off employees — especially if they were already operating with little or no profits.Over the past few weeks, investors have realized that even with the Federal Reserve…

92NY, one of New York City’s premier cultural venues, decided on Friday to abruptly pull an event that evening featuring the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen after he signed an open letter critical of Israel, drawing criticism that the organization was stifling dissenting voices.The event at 92NY, formerly known as the 92nd Street Y, was to have featured Nguyen in conversation with the novelist Min Jin Lee about his new memoir, “A Man of Two Faces,” in an auditorium on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that seats roughly 900. But on Friday afternoon, after the Y said it…

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,…